Weak effect of ion cyclotron acceleration on rapidly chirping beam-driven instabilities in the National Spherical Torus Experiment

摘要

The fast-ion distribution function in the National Spherical Torus Experiment is modified from shot to shot while keeping the total injected power at similar to 2MW. Deuterium beams of different energy and tangency radius are injected into helium L-mode plasmas, producing a rich set of instabilities, including compressional Alfven eigenmodes, toroidicity-induced Alfven eigenmodes (TAE), 50-100 kHz instabilities with rapid frequency sweeps or chirps, and strong, low frequency (10-20 kHz) fishbones. The experiment was motivated by a theory that attributes frequency chirping to the formation of holes and clumps in phase-space. In the theory, increasing the effective collision frequency of the fast ions that drive the instability can suppress frequency chirping. In the experiment, high-power (less than or similar to 3MW) high harmonic fast wave (HHFW) heating accelerates the fast ions in an attempt to alter the nonlinear dynamics. Steady-frequency TAE modes diminish during the HHFW heating but there is little evidence that frequency chirping is suppressed.