A. Higashijima

Role of energetic electrons during current ramp-up and production of high poloidal beta plasma in non-inductive current drive on QUEST

A scenario for non-inductive current ramp-up has been demonstrated using electron cyclotron waves in the spherical tokamak QUEST. The configuration was characterized by a high toroidal magnetic mirror ratio of 2 and a steady vertical magnetic field of more than 10% of the toroidal magnetic field. The generation and confinement of energetic electrons having energy greater than 10?keV were studied using hard x-rays. Because of the energetic electron pressure, a natural divertor formed with an inboard poloidal field null at the high poloidal beta (approximately 3?4).

Data acquisition system for steady-state experiments at multiple sites

A high-performance data acquisition (DAQ) system has been developed for steady-state fusion experiments at the Large Helical Device (LHD). Its significant characteristics are 110u2009MBu2009s−1 continuous DAQ capability and the performance scalability using an unlimited number of DAQ units. Incoming data streams are first transferred temporarily onto the shared random access memory, and then cut into definite time chunks to be stored. They are also thinned out to 1/N to be served for the real-time monitoring clients. In LHD steady-state experiment, the DAQ cluster has established the world record for acquiring 90u2009GB/shot. The established technology of this steady-state acquisition and store can contribute to the ITER experiments whose data amount is estimated in the range 100 or 1000u2009GB/shot. This system also acquires experimental data from multiple remote sites through the fusion-dedicated virtual private network in Japan. The speed lowering problem in long-distance TCP/IP data transfer has been improved by the packet pacing optimization. The demonstrated collaboration scheme will be analogous to that of ITER and the supporting machines.

Non-Inductive Start up of QUEST Plasma by RF Power

Both start-up and sustainment of plasma were successfully achieved by fully non-inductive current drive using microwave with a frequency of 8.2 GHz. Plasmas current of 15 kA was implemented for 1 s. Magnetic surface reconstruction exhibited a plasma shape with an aspect ratio of below 1.5. The plasma current was dependent significantly on the launched microwave power and vertical magnetic field, while not affected by the mode of launched wave and the toroidal refractive index. Hard X-ray (HXR) emitted from energetic electrons accelerated by the microwave was observed, and the discharge with a plasma current over 4 kA followed the same trend as the number of photons of 10 keV to 12 keV. This suggests that the plasma current may be driven by energetic electrons. Based on the experimental conditions, alternative explanations of how the plasma current could be driven are discussed.

Data Acquisition and Management System of LHD

Abstract The data acquisition (DAQ) and management system of the Large Helical Device (LHD), named the LABCOM system, has been in development since 1995. The recently acquired data have grown to 7 gigabytes per shot, 10 times bigger than estimated before the experiment. In 2006 during 1-h pulse experiments, 90 gigabytes of data was acquired, a new world record. This data explosion has been enabled by the massively distributed processing architecture and the newly developed capability of real-time streaming acquisition. The former provides linear expandability since increasing the number of parallel DAQs avoids I/O bottlenecks. The latter improves the unit performance from 0.7 megabytes/s in conventional CAMAC digitizers to nonstop 110 megabytes/s in CompactPCI. The technical goal of this system is to be able to handle one hundred 100 megabytes/s concurrent DAQs even for steady-state plasma diagnostics. This is similar to the data production rate of the next-generation experiments, such as ITER. The LABCOM storage has several hundred terabytes of storage in double-tier structure: The first consists of tens of hard drive arrays, and the second some Blu-ray Disc libraries. Multiplex and redundant storage servers are mandatory for higher availability and throughputs. They together serve sharable volumes on Red Hat GFS2 cluster file systems. The LABCOM system is used not only for LHD but also for the QUEST and GAMMA10 experiments, creating a new Fusion Virtual Laboratory remote participation environment that others can access regardless of their location.

Power Balance Estimation in Long Duration Discharges on QUEST

Fully non-inductive plasma start-up was successfully achieved by using a well-controlled microwave source on the spherical tokamak, QUEST. Non-inductive plasmas were maintained for approximately 3–5 min, during which time power balance estimates could be achieved by monitoring wall and cooling-water temperatures. Approximately 70%–90% of the injected power could be accounted for by calorimetric measurements and approximately half of the injected power was found to be deposited on the vessel wall, which is slightly dependent on the magnetic configuration. The power distribution to water-cooled limiters, which are expected to be exposed to local heat loads, depends significantly on the magnetic configuration, however some of the deposited power is due to energetic electrons, which have large poloidal orbits and are likely to be deposited on the plasma facing components.

Shape Reconstruction of RF-Driven Divertor Plasma on QUEST

In the present RF-driven plasma with a lot of high-energy electrons, there may be anisotropic plasma pressure, which makes difficult a usual equilibrium analysis, but the CCS method can reconstruct the plasma shape precisely regardless of the anisotropy. And the plasma current effect in the open magnetic surfaces outside of the closed magnetic surfaces is considered in the RF-driven plasma. Further high-energy particle guiding center orbits are calculated aiming at estimation of the open-magnetic-surface current distribution.

Heat flux and plasma flow in the far scrape-off layer of the inboard poloidal field null configuration in QUEST

Heat flux and plasma flow in the scrape-off layer (SOL) are examined for the inboard poloidal field null (IPN) configuration of the spherical tokamak QUEST. In the plasma current (Ip) ramp-up phase, high heat flux (>1u2009MW/m2) and supersonic flow (Mach number Mu2009>u20091) are found to be present simultaneously in the far-SOL. The heat flux is generated by energetic electrons excursed from the last closed flux surface. Supersonic flows in the poloidal and toroidal directions are correlated with each other. In the quasi-steady state, sawtooth-like oscillation of Ip at 20u2009Hz is observed. Heat flux and subsonic plasma flow in the far-SOL are modified corresponding to the Ip-oscillation. The heat flow caused by motion of energetic electrons and the bulk-particle transport to the far-SOL is enhanced during the low-Ip phase. Modification of plasma flow in the far SOL occurs earlier than the Ip crash. The M–Ip curve has a limit-cycle characteristic with sawtooth-like oscillation. Such a core–SOL relationship indicates th...

Effect of magnetic structure on RF-induced breakdown in QUEST

In tokamak operations, breakdown of plasma is the first step of the plasma build-up. In this paper, we present a combinative investigation of radio frequency (RF)-induced breakdown experiments in QUEST (Q-shu University Experiment with Steady-State Spherical Tokamak) and a one-point model of hydrogen ionization. Experimental results with two different frequencies of 2.45u2009GHz and 8.2u2009GHz showed that the clear threshold on connection length, L, existed for breakdown with a negative n-index configuration n=−(R/Bv)·(∂Bv/∂R), where R is the major radius and Bv the is vertical magnetic field. In contrast, breakdown was always obtained with positive n-index when changing L. It indicates that a lifetime of an incubated electron plays a significant role in the plasma breakdown. According to one-point model calculation, the experimental threshold of L is well predicted by the lifetime of the incubated electron estimated by employing the loss term along with L. The model calculation also describes the requirement of...

Shape reconstruction of RF-driven divertor plasma on QUEST

In the present RF-driven plasma with a lot of high-energy electrons, there may be anisotropic plasma pressure, which makes the usual equilibrium analysis difficult, but the Cauchy condition surface method can reconstruct the plasma shape precisely regardless of the anisotropy. In addition, the plasma current effect in the open magnetic surfaces outside of the closed magnetic surfaces is considered in the RF-driven divertor plasma. In the reconstruction process, singular value (SV) decomposition is used and optimal criterion function for generalized cross validation is estimated concerning truncation or reduction of the small-SV components.

Electron Cyclotron / Bernstein Wave Heating and Current Drive Experiments using Phased‐array Antenna in QUEST

The phased‐array antenna system for Electron Cyclotron/Bernstein Wave Heating and Current Drive experiments has been developed in the QUEST. The antenna was designed to excite a pure O‐mode wave in the oblique injection for the O‐X‐B mode conversion experiments, and its good performances were confirmed at a low power level. The plasma current (<∼15u2009kA) with an aspect ratio of 1.5 was started up and sustained by only RF injection in the low‐density operations. The long pulse discharge of 10 kA was also attained for 37 s. The new density window to sustain the plasma current was observed in the high‐density plasmas. The single‐null divertor configuration with the high plasma current (<∼25u2009kA) was attained in the 17 s plasma sustainment.