Navigation   about theory   people   projects   publications   review   simulations   home		Generation of Plasma Rotation in a Tokamak by Ion-cyclotron Absorption of Fast Alfvén Waves Authors: F.W. Perkins, R.B. White, P.T. Bonoli, and V.S. Chan Date of PPPL Report: November 2000 Submitted to: Phys. Plasmas 8 (May 2001) 2181-2187. A mechanism is proposed and evaluated for driving rotation in tokamak plasmas by minority ion-cyclotron heating, even though this process introduces negligible angular momentum. The mechanism has two elements: First, angular momentum transport is governed by a diffusion equation with a no-slip boundary condition at the separatrix. Second, Monte-Carlo calculations show that ion-cyclotron energized particles will provide a torque density source which has a zero volume integral but separated positive and negative regions. With such a source, a solution of the diffusion equation predicts the on-axis rotation frequency W to be W = (4qmaxWJ*)(eBR3a2ne(2p)2)-1(tM/tE) where |J *| approximatelty equal to 5-10 is a nondimensional rotation frequency calculated by the Monte-Carlo ORBIT code. Overall, agreement with experiment is good, when the resonance is on the low-field side of the magnetic axis. The predicted rotation becomes more counter-current and reverses sign on the high-field side for a no-slip boundary. The velocity shear layer position is controllable and of sufficient magnitude to affect microinstabilities.
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