Electron Cyclotron Radiation Studies Using the ASTRA Transport Code Coupled with the CYTRAN Routine

J. Dies, J. Garcia, F.Albajar, J.Izquierdo, J.M.Fontdecaba, G.Cortes

Fusion Energy Engineering Laboratory (FEEL),Departament de Fisica i Enginyeria Nuclear, ETSEIB, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona (Spain)

While Electron Cyclotron (CE) radiation losses are weak in present-day magnetically confined plasmas, these effects may become important in next step devices, mainly due to their strong dependence on plasma temperature.

In 1D transport studies, the calculation of the EC power loss is generally performed using locally applied global models. However, it was shown [1][2] that a more accurate analysis is required owing to the non-local nature of the radiation transport. These studies also reveal that in the outer part of the plasma net EC power absorption rather than emission may occur if the reflectivity of the wall is sufficiently high. Furthermore it is known that for ITER-like plasma conditions [1][3], at high electron temperature as expected in the so-called "advanced" transport regimes, EC losses tend to be larger than bremsstrahlung losses (although radiation as a whole remains much less important as a transport channel than heat conduction).
In order to be able to take EC radiation effects consistently into account, in the "Departament de Fisica i Enginyeria Nuclear" of the "Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya", Barcelona, the ASTRA transport code [4] is being coupled with the CYTRAN routine [2], which accounts for essential parts of the non-local physics of the EC transport process including wall reflection and polarization scrambling and which was shown to provide a reasonable approximation to an exact treatment [1]. The experience made with this code package will be described and first modelling results will be presented.

References

[1] Albajar, F., Bornatici, M., Engelmann, F., Nucl. Fusion 42 (2002) 670.
[2] Tamor, S., A Simple Fast Routine for Computation of Energy Transport by Synchrotron Radiation in Tokamaks and Similar Geometries, Rep. SAI-023-81-189-LJ/LAPS-72, Science Applications, Inc., La Jolla, CA (1981).
[3] ITER-FEAT Outline Design Report, ITER EDA Documentation Series No. 18, IAEA, Vienna (2001)
[4] G. Pereverzev, Report IPP 5/42 (1992).