Simulation of neutral beam current drive on EAST tokamak

TL;DR

This study uses Monte Carlo simulations to analyze neutral beam current drive on EAST, revealing how plasma parameters influence fast ion current and confirming the negligible role of trapped ions.

Contribution

The paper provides a detailed phase-space analysis of fast ions and examines the dependence of ion current on plasma parameters using a Monte Carlo code, including shielding effects.

Findings

Trapped ions carry negligible current compared to passing ions.

Fast ion current depends non-monotonically on plasma current I_p.

Fast ion current decreases with increasing plasma density n_e.

Abstract

Neutral beam current drive (NBCD) on the EAST tokamak is studied by using Monte-Carlo test particle code TGCO. Phase-space structure of the steady-state fast ion distribution is examined and visualized. We find that trapped ions carry co-current current near the edge and counter-current current near the core. However, the magnitude of the trapped ion current is one order smaller than that of the passing ions. Therefore their contribution to the fast ion current is negligible (1% of the fast ion current). We examine the dependence of the fast ion current on two basic plasma parameters: the plasma current I_p and plasma density n_e. The results indicate that the dependence of fast ion current on I_p is not monotonic: with I_p increasing, the fast ion current first increases and then decreases. This dependence can be explained by the change of trapped fraction and drift-orbit width with I_p. The fast ion current decreases with the increase of plasma density n_e. This dependence is related to the variation of the slowing-down time with n_e, which is already well known and is confirmed in our specific situation. The electron shielding effect to the fast ion current is taken into account by using a fitting formula applicable to general tokamak equilibria and arbitrary collisionality regime. The dependence of the net current on the plasma current and density follows the same trend as that of the fast ion current.