Current Drive Experiment Using Top/Outboard Side Lower Hybrid Wave Injection On Tst-2 Spherical Tokamak

In the TST-2 spherical tokamak device, we carried out a fully non-inductive current startup experiment by Landau damping of the Lower Hybrid Wave (LHW). Capacitively Coupled Combline Antennas (CCCAs) were used for wave injection. The antennas are located on the outboard side and the top side of the vacuum vessel, and by reversing the toroidal magnetic field, it is possible to simulate the case of wave injection from the bottom side. The highest plasma current of 26.7 kA was achieved by top injection with the reversed toroidal magnetic field. According to numerical calculation using ray tracing and Fokker-Planck codes (GENRAY/CQL3D), the downshift of the parallel wavenumber helped the tail of the electron velocity distribution extend to higher energy than the other cases. Additionally, in order to evaluate the directionality of the wavenumber spectrum which is also important for efficient current drive, a finite element solver (COMSOL) was used. In order to avoid deterioration of the wavenumber spectrum, one limiter of the outboard antenna should be moved away toroidally by 70 mm from the current position, and the preferred distance between the antenna and the cutoff density layer is about 2 cm. (C) 2018 The Japan Society of Plasma Science and Nuclear Fusion Research