Fast ion generation by combined RF-NBI heating in W7-X

Abstract

Good fast ion confinement in quasi-isodynamic stellarators still has to be demonstrated experimentally. In the absence of fusion alphas, auxiliary heating systems can be used to generate fast ions. For this purpose, W7-X has neutral beam injection and its newly installed ion cyclotron heating system. In practice, both systems can run simultaneously, the synergetic running of both is the focus of the current modelling development. With the upgrades to the SCENIC code described here, we find that, compared with pure neutral beam injection (NBI), the fast ion tail is significantly enhanced when radio frequency (RF) heating is enabled. But the effectiveness of heating and fast ion tail generation strongly depends on the plasma parameters and antenna frequency, which calls for further study, both numerical and experimental.