Status of Electron Cyclotron Heating and Current Drive and the Role of DIII-D

摘要

This report is intended to very briefly assess the status of research into electron cyclotron heating (ECH) and current drive, and to summarize the need for ECH in the compact ignition tokamak (CIT) and engineering tokamak reactor (ETR) devices. It is clear that ECH and current drive experiments need to be performed in the power range between that of present experiments and the power level required for next generation devices. In addition, the DIII-D program of confinement improvement in high beta plasmas can be furthered by the availability of an ECH source compatible in power level with the neutral beam injectors. This report concludes with a discussion of what could be accomplished on DIII-D with a 6 MW ECH source at 120 GHz and how this source might be implemented. (ERA citation 12:040183)