Possibility of Current Drive by Neutral Beam Injection into the Field-Reversed Configurations


Y. Yamada, T. Takahashi, N. Iwasawa1), Y. Kondoh, Y. Hirano2), T. Asai3), T. Takahashi3), N. Mizuguchi4), Y. Tomita4)

Department of Electronic Engineering, Gunma University, Kiryu, Gunma 376-8515, Japan
1)Satellite Venture Business Laboratory, Gunma University, Kiryu, Gunma 376-8515, Japan
2)National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan
3)College of Science and Technology, Nihon University, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-8308 Japan
4)National Institute for Fusion Science, Toki, Gifu 509-5292, Japan

Neutral beam injection (NBI) into the Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC) was firstly carried out at the FRC injection experiment device. It has been found as yet that the NBI is effective to improve the confinement and to heat the plasma electrons. Since the FRC decays rapidly, it is indispensable to drive the diamagnetic azimuthal plasma current and to heat the core plasma; detailed investigation on NBI is, therefore, required. The main objective of this study is to examine the possibility of current drive and core plasma heating by a self-consistent numerical simulation. A hybrid fluid electron and both plasma and beam ion particle simulation is employed to calculate a valid contribution of the ion motion to the electromagnetic fields; the ion near the field-null circle has a comparable gyro-radius to the characteristic length of the magnetic field variation. To discuss the heating of FRC plasma, the electron temperature is evolved to hold the heat balance equation and the electron pressure gradient force is considered in the equation of motion for massless electrons. Being assumed a highly elongated FRC and supposed that the NBI is done tangentially to the plasma, the temporal evolution of plasma is analyzed in two-dimensional cross-sectional plane. Hydrogen atom is injected as a neutral beam, and it is ionized by the charge exchange with a deuterium ion, and the direct ionization by both electron and ion impact; these interactions are reproduced by the Monte-Carlo method. The experimental data of cross-sections are acquired from the NIFS data base.