Profile effects on ignition conditions in fusion plasmas

摘要

The present investigation presents an explicit condition for determining whether a given temperature profile in a fusion plasma, established by means of auxiliary heating, will evolve towards ignition or quench under the competing influence of alpha particle heating and thermal conduction. The predictions are found to compare well with numerical simulations. The result is also used to demonstrate that peaked temperature profiles are advantageous from the point of view that the total plasma energy to be established by auxiliary heating in order to reach ignition is minimized. (7 refs., 4 figs.). (Atomindex citation 24:076395)