Quantifying fusion born ion populations in magnetically confined plasmas using ion cyclotron emission

Abstract

Ion cyclotron emission (ICE) offers unique promise as a diagnostic of the fusion born alpha-particle population in magnetically confined plasmas. Pioneering observations from JET and TFTR found that ICE intensity $P_{ICE}$ scales approximately linearly with the measured neutron flux from fusion reactions, and with the inferred concentration, $n_{\alpha }/n_i$, of fusion-born alpha-particles confined within the plasma. We present fully nonlinear self-consistent kinetic simulations that reproduce this scaling for the first time. This resolves a longstanding question in the physics of fusion alpha-particle confinement and stability in MCF plasmas. It confirms the magnetoacoustic cyclotron instability (MCI) as the likely emission mechanism and greatly strengthens the basis for diagnostic exploitation of ICE in future burning plasmas.

References in corpus (1)

• Fast particle-driven ion cyclotron emission (ICE) in tokamak plasmas and the case for an ICE diagnostic in ITER

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Sub-microsecond temporal evolution of edge density during edge localized modes in KSTAR tokamak plasmas inferred from ion cyclotron emission
• Observations and modelling of ion cyclotron emission observed in JET plasmas using a sub-harmonic arc detection system during ion cyclotron resonance heating
• Distinct stages of radio frequency emission at the onset of pedestal collapse in KSTAR H-mode plasmas
• A linear parameters study of ion cyclotron emission using drift ring beam distribution