Large Scale CW ECRH Systems : Some considerations

Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH) is a key component in the heating arsenal for the next step fusion devices like W7-X and ITER. These devices are equipped with superconducting coils and are designed to operate steady state. ECRH must thus operate in CW-mode with a large flexibility to comply with various physics demands such as plasma start-up, heating and current drive, as well as configurationand MHD - control. The request for many different sophisticated applications results in a growing complexity, which is in conflict with the request for high availability, reliability, and maintainability. ‘Advanced’ ECRH-systems must, therefore, comply with both the complex physics demands and operational robustness and reliability. The W7-X ECRH system is the first CW- facility of an ITER relevant size and is used as a test bed for advanced components. Proposals for future developments are presented together with improvements of gyrotrons, transmission components and launchers

The upgraded Collective Thomson Scattering diagnostics of FTU

The 140 GHz Collective Thomson Scattering (CTS) diagnostics installed on the Frascati Tokamak Upgrade (FTU) has been upgraded. The new system now is ready both to detect the thermal CTS radiation (for the first time with the probe frequency below the 1st harmonic electron cyclotron resonance) and to study the impact of possible parametric decay instability (PDI) processes on the received signals. The EC front-steering antenna and transmission system have been complemented with a receiving line that matches a quasi-optical line feeding the homodyne multi-channel radiometer. The scattering volume can be placed in a wide range of locations by means of fast poloidal and toroidal rotations of the two plasma-facing mirrors that have an up-down symmetry with respect to the equatorial plane of the torus. The data acquisition system has been improved adding a new digitizer, with a bandwidth of 5 GHz and a maximum sampling rate of 12.5 GS/s. The possibility of directly sampling and Fourier transforming the down-converted signals greatly improves the suitability of the new diagnostics to carry out thermal ion temperature measurements and to study the competing PDI processes whenever present. © 2015 EURATOM-ENEA. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Advances in the FTU collective Thomson scattering system

The new collective Thomson scattering diagnostic installed on the Frascati Tokamak Upgrade device started its first operations in 2014. The ongoing experiments investigate the presence of signals synchronous with rotating tearing mode islands, possibly due to parametric decay processes, and phenomena affecting electron cyclotron beam absorption or scattering measurements. The radiometric system, diagnostic layout, and data acquisition system were improved accordingly. The present status and near-term developments of the diagnostic are presented

Large scale CW ECRH systems: Meeting a challenge

Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH) systems for next step-fusion devices like W7-X and ITER operate in CW-mode and provide a large flexibility to comply with various physics demands such as plasma start-up, heating and current drive, as well as configuration and MHD control. The request for many different sophisticated applications results in a growing complexity of the systems. This is in conflict with the request for high availability, reliability, and maintainability, which arises from DEMO demands. 'Advanced' ECRH-components must, therefore, comply with both the complex physics demands and operational robustness and reliability. The W7-X ECRH system is the first CW facility of an ITER relevant size and is used as a test bed for such components. Results on improvements of gyrotrons, transmission components and launchers are presented together with proposals for future developments. © 2011 American Institute of Physics

Large Scale CW ECRH Systems: Some considerations

Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH) is a key component in the heating arsenal for the next step fusion devices like W7-X and ITER. These devices are equipped with superconducting coils and are designed to operate steady state. ECRH must thus operate in CW-mode with a large flexibility to comply with various physics demands such as plasma start-up, heating and current drive, as well as configurationand MHD - control. The request for many different sophisticated applications results in a growing complexity, which is in conflict with the request for high availability, reliability, and maintainability. ‘Advanced’ ECRH-systems must, therefore, comply with both the complex physics demands and operational robustness and reliability. The W7-X ECRH system is the first CW- facility of an ITER relevant size and is used as a test bed for advanced components. Proposals for future developments are presented together with improvements of gyrotrons, transmission components and launchers