Fusion product losses due to fishbone instabilities in deuterium JET plasmas
During development of a high-performance hybrid scenario for future deuterium-tritium experiments on the Joint European Torus, an increased level of fast ion losses in the MeV energy range was observed during the instability of high-frequency n = 1 fishbones. The fishbones are excited during deuterium neutral beam injection combined with ion cyclotron healing. The frequency range of the fishbones, 10-25 kHz, indicates that they are driven by a resonant interaction with the NBI-produced deuterium beam ions in the energy range <= 120 keV. The fast particle losses in a much higher energy range are measured with a fast ion loss detector, and the data show an expulsion of deuterium plasma fusion products, 1 MeV tritons and 3 MeV protons, during the fishbone bursts. An MHD mode analysis with the MISHKA code combined with the nonlinear wave-particle interaction code HAGIS shows that the loss of toroidal symmetry caused by the n = 1 fishbones affects strongly the confinement of non-resonant high energy fusion-born tritons and protons by perturbing their orbits and expelling them. This modelling is in a good agreement with the experimental data.
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