Behaviour of runaway electrons in the HL-2A plasmas with LHCD and ECCD

Abstract

The behaviour of runaway electrons have been investigated in lower hybrid current drive (LHCD) and electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) plasmas as well as the LHCD only plasmas in the HL-2A tokamak. The fast electrons generated by lower hybrid waves (LHWs) and electron cyclotron waves (ECWs) can act as a seed population for runaway electrons. In the LHCD only discharges, a large number of runaway electrons are produced after the termination of lower hybrid (LH) power by conversion of fast electrons into runaway electrons due to the fast electron tail which extends above the runaway critical energy. However, in contrast to LHCD only discharges, during the simultaneous application of LHCD and ECCD discharges, runaway electrons cannot be created by the termination of LH power when the ECCD is on duty. The runaway production is observed to be enhanced until the EC power termination. The loop voltage increase due to the termination of EC power gives rise to a decline in the critical runaway energy, which leads to some of the energetic fast electrons converting into runaway electrons via the acceleration from the toroidal electric field. That is, the fast electrons created by waves can be accelerated into the runaway regime due to the Dreicer process.