Interactions of plasma and guard limiter in front of lower hybrid wave antenna on EAST tokamak

Abstract

The hotspots on the guard limiters of the lower hybrid wave (LHW) antenna on EAST tokamak not only cause serious damage to the guard limiters, but also strongly degrade the plasma performance due to enhanced impurity productions. In published studies, the heat flux to the limiters is assumed to be carried to limiter walls by electrons which can absorb a small amount of the launched wave energy via interactions with the lower hybrid modes of high parallel refractive index , and the effects of the sheaths formed in front of the limiter surface are ignored. In this work, the heat fluxes to the limiter surfaces are obtained consistently by conducting one-dimension particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. For the plasma between two guard limiters, while the ions are assumed to be Maxwellian, the electrons are described by using the Fisch model, whose velocity distribution function (VDF) has a resonant plateau in the superthermal region formed by the electron and LHW interaction. Secondary electron emission (SEE) from the limiter surfaces is taken into account by considering two kinds of wall materials, carbon and tungsten. It is found that the sheath potential drop is significantly raised due to the presence of fast electrons. As a result, both ion and electron heat fluxes to the limiters are strongly enhanced compared to those in a Maxwellian plasma, which increases the wall temperature and gives rise to hotspots. The heat flux to the guard limiters increases with the width of the resonant plateau of the electron VDF (i.e. the electron energy). With the enhancement of the sheath potential drop, the physical sputtering yield from the primary and impurity ions on limiter surfaces is found to be significant, which may affect the plasma confinement and discharges.