Measurements of the fast ion slowing-down times in the HL-2A tokamak and comparison to classical theory

Abstract

Physics related to fast ions in magnetically confined fusion plasmas is a very important issue, since these particles will play an important role in future burning plasmas. Indeed, they will act as primary heating source and will sustain the self-ignited condition. To measure the fast ion slowing-down times in a magnetohydrodynamic-quiescent plasmas in different scenarios, very short pulses of a deuterium neutral beam, so-called “blip,” with duration of about 5 ms were tangentially co-injected into a deuterium plasmas at the HuanLiuqi-2A (commonly referred to as HL-2A) tokamak [L. W. Yan, Nucl. Fusion 51, 094016 (2011)]. The decay rate of 2.45 MeV D-D fusion neutrons produced by beam-plasma reactions following neutral beam termination was measured by means of a 235U fission chamber. Experimental results were compared with those predicted by a classical slowing-down model. These results show that the fast ions are well confined with a peaked profile and the ions are slowed down classically without significant loss in the HL-2A tokamak. Moreover, it has been observed that during electron cyclotron resonance heating the fast ions have a longer slowing-down time and the neutron emission rate decay time becomes longer.