The roles of turbulence on plasma heating

In this paper, the characteristic features of the turbulent heating are reviewed, which is considered to be one of the strong candidates of the further heating method in fusion reactor systems, referring to the works in the Institute of Plasma Physics, Nagoya University. The roles of turbulence in plasma heating including toroidal plasma heating are discussed from several points of view. The relation between the heating rate of plasma particles and the thermalization (randomization) frequency is theoretically investigated and the role of plasma turbulence in the fast thermalization is shown. The experimental results on fluctuation and heating of electrons and ions in turbulently heated plasmas are presented. The influence of turbulence, which is responsible for the particle heating, on the diffusion across the confinement magnetic field is considered for the application in the toroidal plasmas. It is pointed out that the turbulent fields in the fast turbulent heating give only a minor effect to the loss of particles across the magnetic field. It can be said that the enhanced fluctuation in turbulent plasma gives its field energy to the plasma particles while it can play the role of the fast thermalization of the ordered motion of particles that is produced in the plasma by some acceleration process. (Kato, T.)