In order to broaden the range of the plasma parameters and provide experimental conditions for physical research into high-performance plasma,the development of the electron cyclotron resonance heating(ECRH) system for the J-TEXT tokamak was initiated in 2017.For the first stage,the ECRH system operated successfully with one 105 GHz/500 kW/1 s gyrotron in 2019.More than 400 kW electron cyclotron(EC) wave power has been injected into the plasma successfully,raising the core electron temperature to 1.5 keV.In 2022,another 105 GHz/500 kW/1 s gyrotron completed commissioning tests which signifies that the ECRH system could generate an EC wave power of 1 MW in total.Under the support of the ECRH system,various physical experiments have been carried out on J-TEXT.The electron thermal transport in ECRH plasmas has been investigated.When ECRH is turned on,the electron thermal diffusivity significantly increases.The runaway current is elevated when a disruption occurs during ECRH heating.When the injected EC wave power is 400 kW,the conversion efficiency of runaway current increases from 35% to 75%.Fast electron behavior is observed in electron cyclotron current drive(ECCD) plasma by the fast electron bremsstrahlung diagnostic(FEB).The increase in the FEB intensity implies that ECCD could generate fast electrons.A successful startup with a 200 kW ECW is achieved.With the upgrade of the ECRH system,the J-TEXT operational range could be expanded and further relevant research could be conducted.
Power measurement is necessary for an electron cyclotron resonance heating(ECRH)system.The directional coupler method has been put forward to monitor high-power microwave from gyrotrons in real time.A multi-hole directional coupler has been designed and manufactured for the 105 GHz/500 kW ECRH system on the J-TEXT tokamak.During the design process,we established the relationships between hole parameters and coupling characteristics based on the multi-hole coupling method and small-hole coupling theory.High-power tests have been carried out.The results indicated the reasonability of the theoretical design and practicality of the fabricated directional coupler.Sources of test errors have been discussed in detail,and the influences of spurious modes on the directional couplers have been emphatically analyzed.
Wenting WENGDonghui XIAYizhe TIANXixuan CHENZhijiang WANGYuan PAN
The core impurity confinement properties are experimentally investigated in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak(EAST)plasma heated by lower hybrid wave(LHW)and electron cyclotron resonance heating(ECRH)(LHW+ECRH).It is shown that the impurity confinement time(τ_(imp))in the L-mode plasma jointly heated by LHW and ECRH is weakly dependent on electron density but strongly dependent on the heating power,thus it is shorter than that in LHW-only heated L-mode plasma with the similar plasma parameters.The combined heating of LHW and ECRH can reduce the collisionality and indicates a more effective heating method for coreτimp reduction and normalized poloidal beta(βP)^(im)provement.It should be emphasized that in this highβ_P operation window the small ELM regime can be accessed,and an L-mode levelτ_(imp)(40 ms-80 ms)and highβ_N(~1.7)can be obtained simultaneously.It means that this typical small ELMy H-mode regime has an advantage in avoiding the serious tungsten accumulation,and will be competitive in future long-pulse steady-state and high-performance operation with high-Z material plasma-facing components.