Scattering of radio frequency waves by blobs in tokamak plasmas

Abstract

The density fluctuations and blobs present in the edge region of magnetic fusion devices can scatter radio frequency (RF) waves through refraction, reflection, diffraction, and coupling to other plasma waves. This, in turn, affects the spectrum of the RF waves and the electromagnetic power that reaches the core of the plasma. The usual geometric optics analysis of RF scattering by density blobs accounts for only refractive effects. It is valid when the amplitude of the fluctuations is small, of the order of 10%, compared to the background density. In experiments, density fluctuations with much larger amplitudes are routinely observed, so that a more general treatment of the scattering process is needed. In this paper, a full-wave model for the scattering of RF waves by a blob is developed. The full-wave approach extends the range of validity well beyond that of geometric optics; however, it is theoretically and computationally much more challenging. The theoretical procedure, although similar to that followed for the Mie solution of Maxwell's equations, is generalized to plasmas in a magnetic field. Besides diffraction and reflection, the model includes coupling to a different plasma wave than the one imposed by the external antenna structure. In the model, it is assumed that the RF waves interact with a spherical blob. The plasma inside and around the blob is cold, homogeneous, and imbedded in a uniform magnetic field. After formulating the complete analytical theory, the effect of the blob on short wavelength electron cyclotron waves and longer wavelength lower hybrid waves is studied numerically. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.