Influence of suprathermal electrons kinetics on cyclotron radiation transport in hot toroidal plasmas

Numerical studies of the contribution of suprathermal electrons to electron cyclotron radiation (ECR) transport in hot (Te > 10 keV) plasmas confined by a strong toroidal magnetic field (B > 5 T) are reported. The respective code (Proc. 14th IAEA Conf. PPCF, Wuerzburg, 1992, v.2, p.35) which, for maxwellian electron velocity distribution (EVD) with inhomogeneous temperature/density, has been tested against well-known numerical and semi-analytical codes by S. Tamor, is now applied to solving the following two problems for ITER-like conditions. (1) Spatial profile of the net radiated power density, PEC(r), is found to be strongly sensitive to the presence of suprathermal electrons. This enables us to evaluate allowable limits for local rise of effective temperature/density of suprathermal electrons (in terms of bi-maxwellian EVD). (2) Self-consistent modeling of the ECR transport and the kinetics of suprathermal electrons gives spatial profile of deviations from maxwellian EVD, caused by the transport of plasma's self EC radiation. These kinetic effects work ultimately for the global flattening of the PEC(r) profile: a lowering, in the core, and a rise, in the periphery. For ITER-like conditions, these effects upon PEC(r) appear to be small. The results of treating the above two tasks suggest the necessity of solving self-consistently the problems of (i) ECRH and ECCD optimization and (ii) ECR transport in the entire range of radiation frequency, when strong enough suprathermals may be produced. (author)