Cross-field injection, propagation, and energy deposition of intense ion beams with application to tokamak plasma heating

The recent availability of intense, space-charge-neutralized, energetic ion beams has led the authors to explore the possibility of using them for heating tokamak plasmas. The following key problems for this application are investigated: (i) beam injection perpendicular to B vector, (ii) beam propagation across B vector in vacuum, and (iii) cross-field beam propagation and energy deposition in plasma. It appears possible that, for proper values of the beam energy, radius and current, an intense ion beam can penetrate to the interior of a tokamak plasma and deposit its energy there. (author)