Alpha particle loss in TFTR deuterium-tritium plasmas with reversed magnetic shear

The confinement and loss of fusion alpha particles are examined for reversed magnetic shear plasmas in TFTR. Such plasmas, with high central q and non-monotonic q profiles can exhibit remarkably reduced energy and particle transport of the thermal ions. However, these same conditions are theoretically predicted to produce high levels of stochastic ripple loss of suprathermal particles, which may reduce the efficiency of plasma heating by the alpha particles and other heating schemes involving fast ions. This paper presents calculations of guiding-center code alpha particle orbit loss from deuterium-tritium (DT) simulations of TFTR deuterium-only experiments. They are compared to results of measurements made in DT reversed shear plasmas of both the confined alpha particle distribution and the alpha particles lost from the plasma. Large fast particle losses have also been found in reversed shear ITER simulations (up to 20%) and from measurements of triton burnup in reversed shear experiments on JT-60U (12%)

Gyrokinetic Stability Studies of the Microtearing Mode in the National Spherical Torus Experiment H-mode

Insight into plasma microturbulence and transport is being sought using linear simulations of drift waves on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX), following a study of drift wave modes on the Alcator C-Mod Tokamak. Microturbulence is likely generated by instabilities of drift waves, which cause transport of heat and particles. Understanding this transport is important because the containment of heat and particles is required for the achievement of practical nuclear fusion. Microtearing modes may cause high heat transport through high electron thermal conductivity. It is hoped that microtearing will be stable along with good electron transport in the proposed low collisionality International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Stability of the microtearing mode is investigated for conditions at mid-radius in a high density NSTX high performance (H-mode) plasma, which is compared to the proposed ITER plasmas. The microtearing mode is driven by the electron temperature gradient, and believed to be mediated by ion collisions and magnetic shear. Calculations are based on input files produced by TRXPL following TRANSP (a time-dependent transport analysis code) analysis. The variability of unstable mode growth rates is examined as a function of ion and electron collisionalities using the parallel gyrokinetic computational code GS2. Results show the microtearing mode stability dependence for a range of plasma collisionalities. Computation verifies analytic predictions that higher collisionalities than in the NSTX experiment increase microtearing instability growth rates, but that the modes are stabilized at the highest values. There is a transition of the dominant mode in the collisionality scan to ion temperature gradient character at both high and low collisionalities. The calculations suggest that plasma electron thermal confinement may be greatly improved in the low-collisionality ITER

Marginal Stability Studies of Microturbulence Near ITB Onset on Alcator C-Mod

Insight into microturbulence and transport in tokamak plasmas is being sought using linear simulations of drift waves near the onset time of an internal transport barrier (ITB) on Alcator C-Mod. Microturbulence is likely generated by instabilities of drift waves and causes transport of heat and particles. This transport is studied because the containment of heat and particles is important for the achievement of practical nuclear fusion. We investigate nearness to marginal stability of ion temperature gradient (ITG) modes for conditions in the ITB region at the trigger time for ITB formation. Data from C-Mod, analyzed by TRANSP (a time dependent transport analysis code), is read by the code TRXPL and made into input files for the parallel gyrokinetic model code GS2. Temperature and density gradients in these input files are modified to produce new input files. Results from these simulations show a weak ITG instability in the barrier region at the time of onset, above marginal stability; the normalized critical temperature gradient is 80% of the experimental temperature gradient. The growth rate increases linearly above the critical value, with the spectrum of ITG modes remaining parabolic up to a multiplicative factor of 2. The effect of varying density gradients is found to be much weaker and causes the fastest growing drift mode to change from ITG to trapped electron mode character. Simulations were carried out on the NERSC IBM 6000 SP using 4 nodes, 16 processors per node. Predictive simulations were examined for converged instability after 10,000-50,000 timesteps in each case. Each simulation took approximately 30 minutes to complete on the IBM SP

Measurements of DT alpha particle loss near the outer midplane of TFTR

Measurements of DT alpha particle loss to the outer midplane region of TFTR have been made using a radially movable scintillator detector. The conclusion from this data is that mechanisms determining the DT alpha loss to the outer midplane are not substantially different from those for DD fusion products. Some of these results are compared with a simplified theoretical model for TF ripple-induced alpha loss, which is expected to be the dominant classical alpha loss mechanism near the outer midplane. An example of plasma-driven MHD-induced alpha particle loss is shown, but no signs of any ``collective`` alpha instability-induced alpha loss have yet been observed

Study of the lineshape of the chi(c1) (3872) state

A study of the lineshape of the chi(c1) (3872) state is made using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3 fb(-1) collected in pp collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV with the LHCb detector. Candidate chi(c1)(3872) and psi(2S) mesons from b-hadron decays are selected in the J/psi pi(+)pi(-) decay mode. Describing the lineshape with a Breit-Wigner function, the mass splitting between the chi(c1 )(3872) and psi(2S) states, Delta m, and the width of the chi(c1 )(3872) state, Gamma(Bw), are determined to be (Delta m=185.598 +/- 0.067 +/- 0.068 Mev,)(Gamma BW=1.39 +/- 0.24 +/- 0.10 Mev,) where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. Using a Flatte-inspired model, the mode and full width at half maximum of the lineshape are determined to be (mode=3871.69+0.00+0.05 MeV.)(FWHM=0.22-0.04+0.13+0.07+0.11-0.06-0.13 MeV, ) An investigation of the analytic structure of the Flatte amplitude reveals a pole structure, which is compatible with a quasibound D-0(D) over bar*(0) state but a quasivirtual state is still allowed at the level of 2 standard deviations