Ion Bernstein waves (IBWs) have been proposed as usefulfor heating and improving transport in tokamak plasmas. Theexperiments carried out so far have not provided a sufficientassessment of this concept, due to the occurrence of parasiticphenomena that caused poor reproducibility of IBW heating andconfinement effects. An experiment on FTU has given the firsttest of IBW coupling to a tokamak plasma by a waveguide antennautilized in place of the standard dipole antenna. In addition,the experiment operates at a high frequency that is expected toreduce the non-linear wave-plasma interaction at the edge. These phenomena were considered to be the cause of the lack of RFpower penetration in the plasma bulk and of the production ofimpurity influx. The possible IBW experimental scenariosexpected for the FTU plasma are described. To perform thisanalysis, quasi-linear and non-linear models are utilized forthe wave propagation, damping and turbulence suppressionsuitable for transport barrier formation. As a result of thisstudy, FTU is expected to be a useful facility for testing theIBW concept for advanced tokamaks.
Ion Bernstein wave antenna loading measurements on the DIII-D tokamak