Weak effect of ion cyclotron acceleration on rapidly chirping beam-driven instabilities in the National Spherical Torus Experiment

The fast-ion distribution function in the National Spherical Torus Experiment is modified from shot to shot while keeping the total injected power at ∼2 MW. Deuterium beams of different energy and tangency radius are injected into helium L-mode plasmas, producing a rich set of instabilities, including compressional Alfvén eigenmodes, toroidicity-induced Alfvén eigenmodes (TAE), 50-100 kHz instabilities with rapid frequency sweeps or chirps, and strong, low frequency (10-20 kHz) fishbones. The experiment was motivated by a theory that attributes frequency chirping to the formation of holes and clumps in phase-space. In the theory, increasing the effective collision frequency of the fast ions that drive the instability can suppress frequency chirping. In the experiment, high-power (≲3 MW) high harmonic fast wave (HHFW) heating accelerates the fast ions in an attempt to alter the nonlinear dynamics. Steady-frequency TAE modes diminish during the HHFW heating but there is little evidence that frequency chirping is suppressed. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd