2024 – Externally-launched Helicon-driven Resonant Pitch-Angle Scattering of Runaway Electrons during Quiescent-Runaway-Electron Plasmas on DIII-D

Externally-launched Helicon-driven Resonant Pitch-Angle Scattering of Runaway Electrons during Quiescent-Runaway-Electron Plasmas on DIII-D

2024 Research Campaign, Disruption Mitigation

Purpose of Experiment

The primary purpose of this experiment will be to explore whether resonant wave-particle interactions between externally launched helicon waves and relativistic electrons (REs) can produce observable pitch-angle scattering of the REs. Successful demonstration of scattering, or more broadly ‘momentum-space engineering’, would lay the experimental groundwork for an exciting, novel pathway for RE mitigation, and would form the physics basis of testing this technique in the future in more disruption-relevant tokamak regimes.

Experimental Approach

Here we are concerned with the resonance by which externally-driven waves impart energy to resonant particles. The benign quiescent runaway electron (QRE) regime on DIII-D will be used as an experimental platform.