Fokker–Planck model for collisional loss of fast ions in tokamaks

Modelling of the collisional loss of fast ions from tokamak plasmas is important from the point of view of the impact of fusion alphas and neutral beam injection ions on plasma facing components as well as for the development of diagnostics of fast ion losses [1–3]. This paper develops a Fokker–Planck (FP) method for the assessment of distributions of collisional loss of fast ions as depending on the coordinates of the first wall surface and on the velocities of lost ions. It is shown that the complete 4D drift FP approach for description of fast ions in axisymmetric tokamak plasmas can be reduced to a 2D FP problem for lost ions with a boundary condition delivered by the solution of a 3D boundary value problem for confined ions. Based on this newly developed FP approach the poloidal distribution of neoclassical loss, depending on pitch-angle and energy, of fast ions from tokamak plasma may be examined as well as the contribution of this loss to the signal detected by the scintillator probe may be evaluated. It is pointed out that the loss distributions obtained with the novel FP treatment may serve as an alternative approach with respect to Monte–Carlo models [4, 5] commonly used for simulating fast ion loss from toroidal plasmas.