The Divertor Tokamak Test (DTT) facility is being realised in Frascati, Italy for the study of the power exhaust issues in view of DEMO tokamak. A multi-MW Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH) system is foreseen with a first set of 16 gyrotrons at 1 MW and 170 GHz available for the first stage of operation; additional 16 gyrotrons with power from 1 MW to 1.2 MW are foreseen in a later stage for a total of up to 33.6 MW of ECRH at plasma. ECRH system itself is part of the 45 MW of external additional heating coupled to the plasma, provided also by Ion Cyclotron Resonance Heating and Neutral Beam Injection. The Transmission Line (TL) is fully quasi-optical, between 84 m and 138 m long and will transfer power up to 1.5 MW per beam from the building hosting the ECRH sources to the Torus Hall. The main section runs in a straight elevated corridor at a few meters above the ground level. In order to have low power losses and a simpler and manageable system, the long TL run is made by four quasi-optical Multi-Beam (MB) lines each transmitting 8 beams via shared mirrors, similar to the W7-X Stellarator TL. The system is thus organised in "clusters" each one made of the 8 gyrotron sources and the respective transmission line and launchers. Avoidance of losses in air and microwave leaks is assured by a vacuum enclosure of the whole line with the use of metallic gaskets. Single-Beam (SB) transmission lines are foreseen at the beginning and end of the MB line, to cover the distance from the gyrotron to a beam-combining mirror and from a splitting mirror to the launcher. The optical design has to cope with space constraints in the building and inherent conversion losses at the reflection on metallic mirrors, whose number was minimised. First evaluations with the electromagnetic modeling tool GRASP and first concepts for the MB mirror cooling are reported.

In this work the Electron Cyclotron (EC) physics performances of the EC system foreseen for the new Divertor Tokamak Test facility (DTT) are investigated using the beam tracing code GRAY on the flat top phase of the most recent DTT full power scenario. The whole core plasma region can be reached by EC beams with complete absorption, assuring bulk heating and core current drive (CD) for profile tailoring, and NTM mitigation in correspondence of the rational surfaces. A detailed analysis regarding modifications of the EC propagation, absorption and CD location due to density fluctuations caused by pellet injection is performed. The compatibility between the EC system and the pellet injection system is verified: the density variations due to pellet injection are foreseen to negligibly influence the EC performances, allowing the EC beams to reach the plasma central region for bulk heating and to drive current on the rational surfaces for NTM mitigation. Finally, the polarization variations originated by the angle steering foreseen for the operational and physics tasks accomplishment during the flat top phase of the discharge are assessed. Negligible power losses have been found keeping fixed polarization during the needed steering.

Long-term options for a steady-state DEMOnstration power plant may require the availability of gyrotrons with an operating frequency significantly above 200 GHz together with an RF output power of more than 1 MW and a total gyrotron efficiency of better than 60%. Frequency tuning in steps of around 2-3 GHz might be needed for control of plasma stability. Multi-purpose operation at frequencies with leaps of about 30 GHz might be considered for plasma start-up, heating and current drive at different operation scenarios. The combination of those requirements clearly challenges present-day technological limits. The R&D work within the EUROfusion WP HCD EC Gyrotron R&D and Advanced Developments is focusing on named targets. In particular, a centre frequency of around 240 GHz is under investigation. The coaxial-cavity gyrotron technology, and, as a possible fallback solution, the conventional hollow-cavity are under investigation. Both options are studied with regards to maximum achievable output power versus efficiency, operation stability and tolerances. Concerning the coaxial-cavity technology, an additional experimental investigation shall verify the predicted operation capabilities. Various promising concepts for multi-stage depressed collectors (MSDC) are under investigation. The research and development are completed by advancing the simulation and test tools capabilities significantly. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

It is well known that fusion plasma operations can be limited in standard scenarios at high beta by resistive instabilities, called neoclassical tearing modes (NTMs), which degrade the plasma confinement leading to a loss of plasma energy, and in some cases to disruption. The avoidance of their onset is a very important issue that has been largely investigated in many tokamaks. In particular, it has been shown that these modes, shaped as magnetic islands, can be triggered by finite seed perturbations associated with long sawtooth crashes. The control of the sawtooth periods is then a key step in the physics of plasma confinement in fusion devices: the shortening of these periods can reduce any triggered large seed island below the NTMs' growth threshold allowing maximum beta values and high plasma performances to be achieved. A powerful tool for sawtooth control is the use of high localized electron cyclotron heating (ECH) and current drive (ECCD), capable of modifying the plasma current density and effecting the sawtooth period. Modulated ECH and ECCD have been used as triggers of sawtooth crashes to test conditions for an a priori constant sawtooth period. In the FTU high magnetic field compact tokamak (R-0 = 0.93 m, a = 0.3 m, B-0 = 4-8 T) similar experiments have been performed with an ECRH system of four gyrotrons operating at 140 GHz and delivering 0.5 MW each. Repetitive pulses of EC power from 1 to 2 gyrotrons up to 0.8MWfor 500 ms have been used to investigate the sensitivity of sawtooth periods during long and short EC switching on and off phases in view of a real time EC control system soon to be working in FTU. A new type of locking of the sawtooth periods to the EC modulation has been observed for deposition inside the q = 1 radius for EC on phase smaller than the ohmic period. In this paper, sawtooth period shortening and locking by ECH and co-ECCD inside the q = 1 radius is investigated and reproduced by numeric simulations.

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The EU will be providing the largest contribution to the ITER electron cyclotron (EC) heating and current drive (H&CD) system (20 MW, CW at 170 GHz). The contribution includes one third of the H&CD gyrotrons, their associated power supplies and four upper port launcher antennas. In all areas of participation, the EU EC partnership (coordinated by the European Fusion Development Agreement) aims toward advancing the technology, while staying within a specified cost envelope. This is portrayed in the co-axial gyrotron development that offers the potential to double the output power per source (2.0 MW), increasing the delivered power for a fixed number of auxiliary systems. The EU partnerships also attempt to increase performance for the entire EC system, in particular the launching antennas. The proposed front steering launcher design offers greater control of MHD activity than the previous remote steering design and opens up the possibility of an enhanced performance UL. The EC physics requirements are repartitioned between the upper and equatorial launchers for a synergetic balance, which increases the EC physics capabilities while relaxing some of the engineering requirements. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.