Nonlinear Landau damping of electron Bernstein waves in MAST-U

Abstract

The Mega-Amp Spherical Tokamak Upgrade (MAST-U) is preparing to investigate microwave based current drive using an advanced wave coupling scheme known as O-X-B at high power. The main goal is to assert if this is an efficient method for current drive in the future fusion demonstration power plant STEP. A model for the nonlinear wave-particle interaction nonlinear Landau damping (NLD) is presented. A relativistic, kinetic and electrostatic description is used. For MAST-U, NLD could lead to heating and current drive at the upper hybrid (UH) layer or at the electron cyclotron (EC) resonance of a substantially downshifted daughter wave produced by the wave-particle interactions. It is found that the typical treatment used for nonlinear waveinteractions fails at two critical points in the vicinity of the UH layer.