Lower hybrid wave propagation in tokamaks in weak and strong absorption regimes

Lower hybrid (LH) waves have the attractive property of damping strongly via electron Landau resonance on relatively fast tail electrons at (2.5-3)xvte, where vte = (2Te/me)1/2. The velocity at which damping occurs depends on the non-linear balance between quasilinear diffusion and collisions. For high efficiency current drive, a low parallel index of refraction, n||, corresponding to a high phase velocity, is chosen. Depending on the plasma electron temperature this may put the wave propagation in a multi-pass regime. In cases of low parallel refractive index, ray tracing with no SOL has been shown to have differences with experiment and collision effects in the scrape off layer may be important. Using a coupled model of the full wave code, TORLH, and the Fokker-Planck code, CQL3D, the importance of full wave effects in weak and strong absorption regimes are studied.