ICRF heating program of the Large Helical Device

ICRF heating programs of the Large Helical Device (LHD) have been discussed. The ICRF heating is considered as the one of the additional heating methods to achieve the objective plasma parameters and as the useful tool to study the various physics subjects. Theoretical analysis methods have been developed and parameter surveys have been carried out to find out optimum heating conditions. Wave propagation and Fokker-Planck analyses are used to evaluate the heating deposition profiles and direct orbit loss effect. Monte-Carlo calculation is also used to confirm above results. Alpha particle simulation program using ICRF is studied and it is possible to examine to a certain extent by forming a similar distribution function in ion velocity space. From these analyses, it becomes clear that the ICRF heating has high potentiality as useful heating tool, even if the loss cone exists at the radial range of γ/ap ≥ 0.4. (author)