Spectral broadening from turbulence in multiscale lower hybrid current drive simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multiscale simulation method that incorporates full-wave scattering physics to explain spectral broadening in lower hybrid waves caused by turbulence, aligning well with experimental data.

Contribution

It develops a novel multiscale approach coupling full-wave scattering probabilities with ray-tracing to model turbulence effects in LH wave propagation.

Findings

Scattering explains the LH spectral gap without ad hoc modifications.

Simulation results match experimental current and HXR profiles in Alcator C-Mod.

Identifies a saturation regime where scattering impact becomes independent of filament properties.

Abstract

The scattering of lower hybrid (LH) waves due to scrape-off layer (SOL) filaments is investigated. It is revealed that scattering can account for the LH spectral gap without any ad hoc modification to the wave-spectrum. This is shown using a multiscale simulation approach which allows, for the first time, the inclusion of full-wave scattering physics in ray-tracing/Fokker-Planck calculations. In this approach, full-wave scattering probabilities are calculated for a wave interacting with a statistical ensemble of filaments. These probabilities are coupled to ray-tracing equations using radiative transfer (RT) theory. This allows the modeling of scattering along the entire ray-trajectory, which can be important in the multi-pass regime. Simulations are conducted for lower hybrid current drive (LHCD) in Alcator C-Mod, resulting in excellent agreement with experimental current and hard X-ray (HXR) profiles. A region in filament parameter space is identified in which the impact of scattering on LHCD is saturated. Such a state coincides with experimental LHCD measurements, suggesting saturation indeed occurs in C-Mod, and therefore the exact statistical properties of the filaments are not important.