Direct coupling of the fast magnetosonic wave to the electrons has been studied on the tokamak TORE SUPRA. Preliminary experiments were dedicated to optimise the scenario for Fast Wave Electron Heating (FWEH) and Current Drive (FWCD). In a first part, thermal kinetic and diamagnetic energy are compared when fast wave is applied to the plasma in two different regimes: 1/ the minority hydrogen heating scenario (ICRH), 2/ the direct electron damping. Effects of ion resonant layers, marginally present in the plasma in the later regime (FWEH), is then presented and discussed.
Electron temperature fluctuation studies can help to understand the nature of the turbulent transport in to-kamak plasmas. At Tore Supra, a 32-channel heterodyne ECE radiometer has been upgraded with two chan-nels of 100 MHz bandwidth and tunable central frequencies allowing the shift of the plasma sample volume in the radial direction. With the sufficiently large video bandwidth and the long sampling time, it is possible to reduce significantly the thermal noise and to identify "true" high frequency components up to 200 kHz from the cross-correlation between these channels. First results of t…
The Tore Supra tokamak is the largest superconducting magnetic fusion facility, has been devoted to long-duration high-performance discharge research. With a steady-state magnetic field and water cooled plasma facing components, discharges up to 6 minutes 24 seconds duration with injected / extracted energy up to 1 GJ have been performed. The Tore Supra real time measurements and control (RTMC) system has been upgraded to address schemes dedicated to long pulse operation with simultaneous control of an increasing number of plasma parameters. This includes plasma equilibrium control with possib…
The last experimental campaign of Tore Supra was also the last one with a set of plasma facing components mainly dating from the assembly of the machine in 1988. This campaign was interrupted a few days ahead of schedule because of the rupture of one coolant tube of the Inner First Wall (IFW). The rupture was observed by an abrupt increase of the pressure in the vessel. It was caused by a water leak which occurred two seconds after the end of the lower hybrid heating pulse during the current ramp-down. Investigations show that the accident is not related to the operation of the machine or a we…
The sputtering of inside wall components of tokamaks can lead to the injection of supersaturated vapour in the plasma edge. The resulting condensation favours the formation of clusters which can give rise to solid particulates by further accretion. Sputtering discharges are proposed to have highlight on the formation of carbonaceous dust observed in the tokamaks with graphite based wall components. The flux of the sputtered carbon atoms is evaluated in the conditions of our laboratory discharges as well as the evolution of their energy distribution. It is shown that a cooling mechanism occurs …
An analytical model previously developed to study the structure of the magnetic field for the TEXTOR-DED [S.S. Abdullaev et al. Phys. Plasmas, 6, 153 (1999)] is applied to the similar study of the Ergodic Divertor of Tore Supra tokamak [Ph. Ghendrih, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion, 38, 1653 (1996)]. The coil configuration of ED Tore Supra consists of six modules equidistantly located along the toroidal direction on the low-field-side of the torus with given toroidal and poloidal extensions. The Hamiltonian formulation of field line equations in straight-field-line coordinates (Boozer coordinates…
During the 2003 experimental campaign, the aim of realizing reliable fully non inductive discharges has been successfully completed in Tore Supra. One the major difficulties in optimizing this scenario comes from MHD stability issues. Indeed, the current profile obtained with LH antennas in these experiments is prone to the triggering of single or double tearing modes. Under certain conditions, the discharges enters in a regime of permanent MHD activity. The present work investigates the MHD properties of these fully non-inductive discharges in the operational space defined by the toroidal mag…
Traditionally devoted to electron density profile measurement we show that fast frequency sweeping reflectometry technique can bring valuable and innovative measurements onto plasma turbulence. While fast frequency sweeping technique is traditionally devoted to electron density radial profile measurements we show in this paper how we can handle the fluctuations of the reflected signal to recover plasma density fluctuation measurements with a high spatial and temporal resolution. Large size turbulence related to magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) activity and the associated magnetic islands can be dete…
Regular oscillations of the central electron temperature have been observed by means of ECE and SXR diagnostics during non-inductively driven discharges on Tore Supra. These oscillations are sustained by LHCD, do not have a helical structure and, therefore, cannot be ascribed as MHD phenomena. The most probable explanation of this oscillating regime (O-regime) is the assumption that the plasma current density (and, thus, the q-profile) and the electron temperature evolve as a non-linearly coupled predator-pray system. The integrated modelling code CRONOS has been used to demonstrate that the c…
The Inner First Wall (IFW) is the main limiter in Tore Supra for long and powerful discharges. The original graphite IFW was partly damaged by 8 years of operation and a sector of 60{\textdegree} was replaced between 1995 and 1997 by CFC brazed elements. They are designed to accept twice as much flux (2 MW/m${}^2$) as the older ones and are expected to be more resilient. The new elements gave the opportunity to install diagnostics (thermocouples and langmuir probes) on a poloidal sector, to characterise the behaviour of the new IFW and especially the heat flux profile. The pattern doesn't foll…
Thermonuclear fusion reactivity is a pivotal quantity in the studies pertaining to fusion energy production, fusion ignition and energy break-even analysis in both inertially and magnetically confined systems. Although nuclear fusion reactivity and thereafter the power density of a magnetic confinement fusion reactor and the fulfillment of the ignition criterion are quantitatively determined by assuming the ion speed distribution to be Maxwellian, a significant population of suprathermal ions,with energy greater than the quasi-Maxwellian background plasma temperature, is generated by the fusio…
As one of the most spectacular energy release events in the solar system, solar flares are generally powered by magnetic reconnection in the solar corona. As a result of the re-arrangement of magnetic field topology after the reconnection process, a series of new loop-like magnetic structures are often formed and are known as flare loops. A hot diffuse region, consisting of around 5-10 MK plasma, is also observed above the loops and is called a supra-arcade fan. Often, dark, tadpole-like structures are seen to descend through the bright supra-arcade fans. It remains unclear what role these so-…
This paper summarizes the results of experiments on electron cyclotron emission (ECE) measurements at the fundamental harmonic recently performed at the axially symmetric magnetic mirror device GDT (Budker Institute, Novosibirsk). New ECE diagnostics is installed to facilitate the successful electron cyclotron resonance heating experiment and operates in the vicinity of the heating frequency of 54.5 GHz. Besides expected emission of thermal electrons, a clearly resolved non-thermal ECE is observed indicating the presence of suprathermal electrons driven by high-power microwave heating. The par…
Seventy measurements of electron heating at the Earth's quasi-perpendicular bow shock are analyzed in terms of Maxwellian-temperatures obtained from fits to the core electrons that separate thermal heating from supra-thermal acceleration. The perpendicular temperatures are both greater and lesser than expected for adiabatic compression. The average parallel and perpendicular heating is the same. These results are explained because, over the electron gyroradius, $δB/B\sim 1$ and $eδϕ/T_e\sim 1$, so electron trajectories are more random and chaotic than adiabatic. Because density fluctuations ar…
The creation of well-thermalized, hot and dense plasmas is attractive for warm dense matter studies. We investigate collisionally induced energy absorption of an ultraintense and ultrashort laser pulse in a solid copper target using particle-in-cell simulations. We find that, upon irradiation by a $2\times10^{20}{\rm\,W\,cm^{-2}}$ intensity, $60{\rm\,fs}$ duration, circularly polarized laser pulse, the electrons in the collisional simulation rapidly reach a well-thermalized distribution with ${\sim}3.5{\rm\,keV}$ temperature, while in the collisionless simulation the absorption is several orde…
Particle acceleration and heating at mildly relativistic magnetized shocks in electron-ion plasma are investigated with unprecedentedly high-resolution two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations that include ion-scale shock rippling. Electrons are super-adiabatically heated at the shock, and most of the energy transfer from protons to electrons takes place at or downstream of the shock. We are the first to demonstrate that shock rippling is crucial for the energization of electrons at the shock. They remain well below equipartition with the protons. The downstream electron spectra are approx…
Turbulent transport is known to limit the plasma confinement of present-day optimized stellarators. To address this issue, a novel method to strongly suppress turbulence in such devices is proposed, namely the resonant wave-particle interaction of supra-thermal particles - e.g., from ion-cyclotron-resonance-frequency (ICRF) heating - with turbulence-driving microinstabilities like ion-temperature-gradient (ITG) modes. The effectiveness of this mechanism is demonstrated via analytic theory and large-scale gyrokinetic simulations, revealing an overall turbulence reduction by up to $80\%$. These …
The theory of the ion cyclotron (IC) electrostatic parametric instabilities of plasma which are driven by the elliptically polarized fast wave (FW) of the finite wavelength is developed. The growth rate of the IC quasimode decay instability, which was considered as a potential source of the generation of the high energy ions in scrape-off layer (SOL) during FW injection in tokamaks, is derived analytically for arbitrary values of the FW electric field and wavelengths of the unstable IC perturbations. The comprehensive numerical analysis of the dispersion equation for three wave system which co…
Formation of Suprathermal Electron Populations in the Expanding, Turbulent Solar Wind
KU Leuven（荷语鲁汶大学）；Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy（比利时皇家空间气物理研究所）；Royal Observatory of Belgium（比利时皇家天文台）；Université Catholique de Louvain（天主教鲁汶大学）
Heavy (O+) ion energization and field-aligned motion in and near the ionosphere are still not well understood. Based on observations from the CASSIOPE Enhanced Polar Outflow Probe (e-POP) at altitudes between 325 km and 730 km over one year, we present a statistical study (24 events) of ion heating and its relation to field-aligned ion bulk flow velocity, low-frequency waves and field-aligned currents (FACs). The ion temperature and field-aligned bulk flow velocity are derived from 2-D ion velocity distribution functions measured by the suprathermal electron imager (SEI) instrument. Consistent…
Measurements are reported of electromagnetic emission close to the cyclotron frequency of energetic ions in JET plasmas heated by waves in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF). Hydrogen was the majority ion species in all of these plasmas. The measurements were obtained using a sub-harmonic arc detection (SHAD) system in the transmission lines of one of the ICRF antennas. The measured ion cyclotron emission (ICE) spectra were strongly filtered by the antenna system, and typically contained sub-structure, consisting of sets of peaks with a separation of a few kHz, suggesting the excita…
Space plasmas are collisionpoor and kinetic effects prevail leading to wave fluctuations, which transfer the energy to small scales: wave-particle interactions replace collisions and enhance dispersive effects heating particles and producing suprathermal populations observed at any heliospheric distance in the solar wind. At large distances collisions are not efficient, and the selfgenerated instabilities constrain the solar wind anisotropy including the thermal core and the suprathermal components. The generalized power-laws of Kappa-type are the best fitting model for the observed distributi…
Non-thermal pickup ions (PUIs) are created in the solar wind (SW) by charge-exchange between SW ions (SWIs) and slow interstellar neutral atoms. It has long been theorized, but not directly observed, that PUIs should be preferentially heated at quasi-perpendicular shocks compared to thermal SWIs. We present in situ observations of interstellar hydrogen (H+) PUIs at an interplanetary shock by the New Horizons' Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument at ~34 au from the Sun. At this shock, H+ PUIs are only a few percent of the total proton density but contain most of the internal particle press…
This work proposes a parametric equilibrium distribution function F_eq to be applied to the gyrokinetic studies of the Finite Orbit Width behavior of guiding centers representing several species encountered in axisymmetric tokamak plasma, as fusion products, thermal bulk and energetic particles from Ion Cyclotron Radiation Heating and Negative Neutral Beam Injections. After the analysis of the basic results of orbit theory obtained with a particularly convenient orbit coordinates set, it is shown how the proposed F_eq satisfies the two conditions that make it an equilibrium distribution functi…
The key result of the present work is the theoretical prediction and observation of the formation of a new type of transport barrier in fusion plasmas, called F-ATB (fast ion-induced anomalous transport barrier). As demonstrated through state-of-the-art global electrostatic and electromagnetic simulations, the F-ATB is characterized by a full suppression of the turbulent transport - caused by strongly sheared, axisymmetric $E \times B$ flows - and an increase of the neoclassical counterpart, albeit keeping the overall fluxes at significantly reduced levels. The trigger mechanism is shown to be…
A class of parametric distribution functions has been proposed in [C.DiTroia, Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion,54,2012] as equilibrium distribution functions (EDFs) for charged particles in fusion plasmas, representing supra-thermal particles in anisotropic equilibria for Neutral Beam Injection, Ion Cyclotron Heating scenarios. Moreover, the EDFs can also represent nearly isotropic equilibria for Slowing-Down $alpha$ particles and core thermal plasma populations. These EDFs depend on constants of motion (COMs). Assuming an axisymmetric system with no equilibrium electric field, the EDF dep…
The recent progress in high-temperature superconductor technologies has led to the design and construction of SPARC, a compact tokamak device expected to reach plasma breakeven with up to $25$MW of external ion cyclotron resonant heating (ICRH) power. This manuscript presents local (flux-tube) and radially global gyrokinetic GENE (Jenko et al 2000 Phys. Plasmas {\bf 7} 1904) simulations for a reduced-field and current H-mode SPARC scenario showing that supra-thermal particles - generated via ICRH - strongly suppress ion-scale turbulent transport by triggering a fast ion-induced anomalous trans…
When a relativistic intensity laser interacts with the surface of a solid density target, suprathermal electron currents are subject to Weibel instability filamentation when propagating through the thermal population of the bulk target. We present time resolved shadowgraphy of radial ionization front expansion and Weibel instability filamentation within a thin, sub-micron, sheet initiated by irradiation with a short pulse, high intensity laser. High temporal (100 fs) and spatial (1 $μ$m) resolution shadowgraphy of the interaction reveals a relativistic expansion of the ionization front within …
A novel type of internal transport barrier (ITB) called F-ATB (fast ion-induced anomalous transport barrier) has been recently observed in state-of-the-art global gyrokinetic simulations on a properly optimized ASDEX Upgrade experiment [A. Di Siena et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 127} 025002 (2021)]. Unlike the transport barriers previously reported in literature, the trigger mechanism for the F-ATB is a basically electrostatic wave-particle resonant interaction between supra-thermal particles - generated via ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) - and ion scale plasma turbulence. This resonant …
We present experimental evidence of ultra-high energy density plasma states with the keV bulk electron temperatures and near-solid electron densities generated during the interaction of high contrast, relativistically intense laser pulses with planar metallic foils. The bulk electron temperature and density have been measured using x-ray spectroscopy tools; the temperature of supra-thermal electrons traversing the target was determined from measured bremsstrahlung spectra; run-away electrons were detected using magnet spectrometers. The measured electron energy distribution was in a good agree…
A new basis has been found for the theory of self-organization of transport avalanches and jet zonal flows in L-mode tokamak plasma, the so-called "plasma staircase." The jet zonal flows are considered as a wave packet of coupled nonlinear oscillators characterized by a complex time- and wave-number dependent wave function; in a mean-field approximation this function is argued to obey a discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation with subquadratic power nonlinearity. It is shown that the subquadratic power leads directly to a white Lévy noise, and to a Lévy-fractional Fokker-Planck equation for ra…
Experiments were performed to study electron acceleration by intense sub-picosecond laser pulses propagating in sub-mm long plasmas of near critical electron density (NCD). Low density foam layers of 300-500 um thickness were used as targets. The NCD-plasma was produced by a mechanism of a super-sonic ionization when a well-defined separate ns-pulse was sent onto the foam-target forerunning the relativistic main pulse. The effect of the relativistic laser pulse channeling and creation of quasi-static azimuthal magnetic and radial electric fields that keeps electrons in the channel ensured effe…
Thermalization and heating of plasma flows at shocks result in unstable charged-particle distributions which generate a wide range of electromagnetic waves. These waves, in turn, can further accelerate and scatter energetic particles. Thus, the properties of the waves and their implication for wave-particle interactions are critically important for modeling energetic particle dynamics in shock environments. Whistler-mode waves, excited by the electron heat flux or a temperature anisotropy, arise naturally near shocks and foreshock transients. As a result, they can often interact with supra-the…
We perform particle-in-cell simulations of perpendicular nonrelativistic collisionless shocks to study electron heating and pre-acceleration for parameters that permit extrapolation to the conditions at young supernova remnants. Our high-resolution large-scale numerical experiments sample a representative portion of the shock surface and demonstrate that the efficiency of electron injection is strongly modulated with the phase of the shock reformation. For plasmas with low and moderate temperature (plasma beta $β_{\rm p}=5\cdot 10^{-4}$ and $β_{\rm p}=0.5$), we explore the nonlinear shock stru…
The transport of the energy contained in electrons, both thermal and suprathermal, in solar flares plays a key role in our understanding of many aspects of the flare phenomenon, from the spatial distribution of hard X-ray emission to global energetics. Motivated by recent {\em RHESSI} observations that point to the existence of a mechanism that confines electrons to the coronal parts of flare loops more effectively than Coulomb collisions, we here consider the impact of pitch-angle scattering off turbulent magnetic fluctuations on the parallel transport of electrons in flaring coronal loops. I…
The origin of hard X-ray (HXR) excess emission from clusters of galaxies is still an enigma, whose nature is debated. One of the possible mechanism to produce this emission is the bremsstrahlung model. However, previous analytical and numerical calculations showed that in this case the intracluster plasma had to be overheated very fast because suprathermal electrons emitting the HXR excess lose their energy mainly by Coulomb losses, i.e., they heat the background plasma. It was concluded also from these investigations that it is problematic to produce emitting electrons from a background plasm…
Reconnection-induced electron energization in magnetospheric Kelvin-Helmholtz dynamics
Centre for mathematical Plasma Astrophysics, Department of Mathematics, KU Leuven（KU鲁汶大学数学系等离子体天体物理学中心）；Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy（比利时皇家空间气象学研究所）；Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison（威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校物理系）；CNR-ISTP, Bari（意大利国家研究委员会等离子体科学与技术研究所）；Laboratoire Lagrange, Observatoire Côte d’Azur, CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心蔚蓝海岸天文台拉格朗日实验室）；LPC2E, CNRS, Université d’Orléans（奥尔良大学法国国家科学研究中心地球与行星化学实验室）
