Integro-differential modeling of ICRH wave propagation and damping at arbitrary cyclotron harmonics and wavelengths in tokamaks

Both at low and higher cyclotron harmonics, properly accounting for finite Larmor radius effects is crucial in many ion cyclotron resonance frequency heating scenarios creating high energy tails. The present paper discusses ongoing work to extend the 1D TOMCAT wave equation solver [D. Van Eester & R. Koch, Plasma Phys. Contr. Fusion 40 (1998) 1949] to arbitrary harmonics and arbitrary wavelengths. Rather than adopting the particle position, the guiding center position is used as the independent variable when writing down an expression for the dielectric response. Adopting a philosophy originally due to Kaufman [A.N. Kaufman, Phys. Fluids 15 (1972) 1063], the relevant dielectric response in the Galerkin formalism is written in a form where the electric field and the test function vector appear symmetrically, which yields a power balance equation that guarantees non-negative absorption for any wave type for Maxwellian plasmas. Moreover, this choice of independent variable yields intuitive expressions that can directly be linked to the corresponding expressions in the RF diffusion operator. It also guarantees that a positive definite power transfer from waves to particles is ensured for any of the wave modes in a plasma in which all populations have a Maxwellian distribution, as is expected from first principles. Rather than relying on a truncated Taylor series expansion of the dielectric response, an integro-differential approach that retains all finite Larmor radius effects [D. Van Eester & E. Lerche, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 55 (2013) 055008] is proposed.