Plasma heating and current drive by an obliquely propagating upper‐hybrid cyclotron beat wave

Excitation of an obliquely propagating upper-hybrid cyclotron beat wave is considered for plasma heating and current drive in tokamaks. The beat wave is excited by the interaction of two intense free-electron laser (FEL) pulses at their difference frequency. The three-wave nonlinear interaction equations in a magnetized plasma are solved numerically in a steady-state two-dimensional (2-D) geometry for this purpose. The 2-D toroidal inhomogeneity effect and the effect of finite spatial width of the pump microwave pulses are taken into account for the beat wave excitation. To illustrate the principle, the microwave tokamak experiment (MTX) [Plasma Phys. Controlled Fusion 30, 57 (1988)] is considered. It has been found that the fraction of total input power of the pump microwaves deposited in the cyclotron beat wave is lower than the case of a Langmuir type beat wave considered by Amin and Cairns [Nucl. Fusion 30, 327 (1990)]. However, increasing the input powers of the pump microwaves, a substantial amount of input power can be deposited in the excited beat wave. The beat wave eventually transfers this power to the electrons by cyclotron damping. It has also been found that for the same input parameters, right-hand polarized pumps are more efficient than left-hand polarized pump microwaves for beat wave excitation.