79 research outputs found

    On the Characteristic Difference of Neoclassical Bootstrap Current and Its Effects on MHD Equilibria between CHS Heliotron/Torsatron and CHS-qa Quasi-Axisymmetric Stellarator

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    The characteristic difference of neoclassical bootstrap current and its effects on MHD equilibria are described for the CHS heliotron/torsatron and the CHS-qa quasi-axisymmetric stellarator. The direction of bootstrap current strongly depends on collisionality in CHS, whereas it does not in CHS-qa because of quasi-axisymmetry. In the CHS configuration, it appears that enhanced bumpy (Bs1) and sideband components of helical ripple (By1) play an important role in reducing the magnetic geometrical factor, which is a key factor in evaluating the value of bootstrap cuffent, and determining its polarity. The bootstrap current in CHS-qa is theoretically predicted to be larger than that in CHS and produces significant effects on the resulting rotational transform and magnetic shear. In the finite B plasmas, the magnetic well becomes deeper in both CHS and CHS-qa and its region is expanded in CHS. The existence of co-flowing bootstrap current makes the magnetic well shallow in comparison with that in currentless equilibrium

    Orbit Topology and Confinement of Energetic Ions in the CHS-qa Quasi-Axisymmetric Stellarator

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    The orbit topology and confinement of neutral beam-injected energetic ions are investigated for the current target configuration of the CHS-qa quasi-axisymmetric stellarator. It was shown that tangentially co-injected neutral beam (NB) heating is efficient even at a low magnetic field strength Bt of 0.5 T, whereas the heating efficiency of the counter-injected NB becomes significantly lower as Bt decreases because of the increase of first orbit loss. The energy loss rate increases as the beam injection angle becomes perpendicular, suggesting that the residual non-axisymmetric ripple in the peripheral domain plays a role in enhancing the transport of trapped ions. An interesting observation involves the appearance of the island structure in both the gyro motion following orbit and the guiding center collisionless orbit of counter-moving transit beam ions. It appears under a particular, narrow range of parameters, i.e., energy, pitch angle v///v, normalized minor radius r/a at the launching point and Bt

    Magnetic Field Amplification Associated with the Richtmyer-Meshkov Instability

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    The amplification of a magnetic field due to the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability (RMI) is investigated by two-dimensional MHD simulations. Single-mode analysis is adopted to reveal definite relation between the nonlinear evolution of RMI and the field enhancement. It is found that an ambient magnetic field is stretched by fluid motions associated with the RMI, and the strength is amplified significantly by more than two orders of magnitude. The saturation level of the field is determined by a balance between the amplified magnetic pressure and the thermal pressure after shock passage. This effective amplification can be achieved in a wide range of the conditions for the RMI such as the Mach number of an incident shock and the density ratio at a contact discontinuity. The results suggest that the RMI could be a robust mechanism of the amplification of interstellar magnetic fields and cause the origin of localized strong fields observed at the shock of supernova remnants.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

    Effects of Current Profile on Global Ideal MHD Stability in a Compact Quasi-Axisymmetric Stellarator

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    The global ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability for a proposed compact quasi-axisymmetric stellarator CHS-qa has been investigated taking the effect of bootstrap current into account. Assuming experimentally achievable density and temperature profiles, the stability properties of global low-n modes have been studied by using threedimensionalnumerical codes based on fixed boundary MHD equilibria including self-consistent bootstrap current for the CHS-qa reference configuration. Consequently it has been shown that values of edge rotational transform play a crucial role in triggering external kink instability. Concerning a lot of other possibilities in experimental practice to change the total parallel current, we have also studied equilibria with increased or decreased parallel current, but fixed profile. The onset of external kink modes depends on rotational transform or current profile, and we found a stable equilibrium in spite of the edge rotational transform above 0.5. The results imply the possibility of stabilizing external kink modes through current and/or pressure profile control in high beta equilibria

    Variation of Heating Efficiency of Magnetically Sheared CHS Plasmas by Polarization Control of 106GHz EC-Wave

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    To clarify the effect of polarization on electron cyclotron heating (ECH) in magnetized plasmas, experiment controlling the polarization of injected EC-waves is carried out in Compact Helical System (CHS). In the experiment, plasmas are generated and sustained only with 106.4 GHz ECH power. Magnetic field at the magnetic axis is 1.9 T so that the wave frequency is second harmonic. The optimum direction of linear polarization for the shortest time-delay of density start-up from the start of power injection and the optimum direction for the highest electron temperature and plasma stored energy during plasma duration show clear difference. The difference is attributed to the CHS magnetic configuration with strong shear and the plasma volume expansion from magnetic axis to the last closed flux surface

    Determination of the Major Impurity Radiators in the Reheat Mode Discharges in the Compact Helical System

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    Radiation brightness and impurity behaviors have been studied for reheat mode discharges in the Compact Helical System (CHS) by three different types of impurity diagnostics. Total radiation power measured by a pyroelectric detector significantly reduces after entering the reheat mode, whereas the line-averaged radiation brightness measured by an absolute extreme ultraviolet (AXUV) photodiode array increases especially for a center viewing chord due to the impurity accumulation in the plasma core. One possible reason for this opposite behavior between the two bolometric detectors is the reduced sensitivity of the AXUV photodiode for lower energy photons in vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) region. This speculation is supported by temporal evolutions of VUV spectra measured by a grazing incidence spectrometer. These results demonstrate that the comparison of three impurity diagnostics would be beneficial to the determination of the major impurity radiators and a comprehensive understanding of impurity behaviors in the reheat mode discharges
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