Table of contents

The neutral beam injection (NBI) system was developed on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) for plasma heating and current driving. This paper presents the brief history, design, development, and the main experimental results of the R&D of neutral beam injector on the test bed and on EAST. In particular, it will describe: (1) how the two beamlines with a total beam power of 8 MW were developed; (2) the design of the EAST-NBI system including the high power ion source, main vacuum chamber, inner components, beam diagnostic system and sub-system; (3) the experimental results of beamline-1 on the summer campaign of EAST in 2014 and, (4) the status of beamline-2 and the future plan of EAST-NBIs.

We investigate the Terahertz (THz) plasma waves in a two-dimensional (2D) electron gas in a nanometer field effect transistor (FET) with quantum effects, the electron scattering, the thermal motion of electrons and electron exchange-correlation. We find that, while the electron scattering, the wave number along y direction and the electron exchange-correlation suppress the radiation power, but the thermal motion of electrons and the quantum effects can amplify the radiation power. The radiation frequency decreases with electron exchange-correlation contributions, but increases with quantum effects, the wave number along y direction and thermal motion of electrons. It is worth mentioning that the electron scattering has scarce influence on the radiation frequency. These properties could be of great help to the realization of practical THz plasma oscillations in nanometer FET.

Divertor heat patterns induced by Lower Hybrid Current Drive (LHCD) L-mode plasmas are investigated using an infra-red (IR) camera system on an Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). A two-dimensional finite element analysis code DFlux is used to compute heat flux along the poloidal divertor target and corresponding quantities. Outside the Origin Strike Zone (OSZ), a Second Peak Heat Flux (SPHF) zone, where the heat flux is even stronger than that at the OSZ, appears on the lower-outer (LO) divertor plates with LHCD and disappears immediately after switching off the LHCD. The main heat-flux shifts from the SPHF zone towards the OSZ when the divertor configuration converts from double null to lower single null, indicating that the growth of the SPHF zone is apparently affected by a plasma magnetic configuration. The heat patterns on the LO divertor plates are observed to be different from that on the lower-inner (LI) targets as the SPHF zone appears only on the LO divertor target. It is also found that the heat flux at the SPHF zone was obviously enhanced after the Supersonic Molecule Beam Injection (SMBI) pulse.

In the real-time plasma electron density measurement using far infrared (FIR) laser interferometry, the plasma electron density can be calculated by measuring the real time phase difference between the reference signal and the probe signal. A novel Real-time Phase Jump Process (RPJP) method is applied to the HL-2A tokamak. With this method, the phase difference precision is up to 1/3600 fringe (1 fringe is equal to a phase shift of 2π), and the dynamic measurement range is extensible 65536 fringes. The time resolution of the phase difference is 80 ns, while the feedback delay is 180 μs.

The re-emitted images of the frame camera indicated that the high-Z (Bi) capsule deviated about 29 μm from the center of the hohlraum in experiments at the Shenguang-II (SG-II) laser facility; however, investigations on this issue have seldom been performed. The influence of three dimensional offsets of a capsule on its radiation asymmetry in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) will be analyzed in this paper. Simulations demonstrate that the axial offset of 100 μm of a capsule from the center of the hohlraum brings an additional 3.5% radiation drive asymmetry and 6.5% P₁ asymmetry (Legendre odd model) on the capsule in the SG-II laser facility, and the offset must be within 25 μm if the P₁ asymmetry is restricted to below 2%.

The attenuation of electromagnetic (EM) waves in unmagnetized plasma generated by an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) actuator has been investigated both theoretically and experimentally. A numerical study is conducted to investigate the propagation of EM waves in multilayer plasma structures which cover a square flat plate. Experimentally, an ICP actuator with dimensions of 20 cm×20 cm×4 cm is designed to produce a steady plasma slab. The attenuation of EM waves in the plasma generated by the ICP actuator is measured by a reflectivity arch test method at incident waves of 2.3 GHz and 10.1 GHz, respectively. A contrastive analysis of calculated and measured results of these incident wave frequencies is presented, which suggests that the experiment accords well with our theory. As expected, the plasma slab generated by the ICP actuator can effectively attenuate the EM waves, which may have great potential application prospects in aircraft stealth.

Plasma-neutral gas dynamics is computationally investigated in a miniaturized microthruster that encloses Ar and contains dielectric material sandwiched between two metal plates using a two-dimensional plasma mode. Spatial and temporal plasma properties are investigated by solving the Poisson equation with the conservation equations of charged and excited neutral plasma species using the COMSOL Multiphysics 4.2b. The microthruster property is found to depend on the secondary electron emission coefficient. The electrohydrodynamic force (EHD) is calculated and found to be significant in the sheath area near the dielectric layer and is found to affect gas flow dynamics including the Ar excimer formation and density. The effects of pressure and secondary emission coefficient are discussed. The plasma characteristics are affected by small changes in the secondary electron emission coefficient, which could result from the dielectric erosion and aging, and is found to affect the electrohydrodynamic force produced when the microthruster is used to produce thrust for a small spacecraft.

This paper presents separation results of a mixture of nitrogen, argon and krypton ions in the process of plasma-optical mass separation on the POMS-E-3 separator model. We determined the behavior of the separation with a change in the value of magnetic field induction in the azimuthator and in the degree of compensation of the spatial charge in ion flows. An analysis is performed for experimental data by correlation with the results of a theoretical study and numerical experiments. The objectives of future experiments are outlined.

Some reports presented that the radar cross section (RCS) from the radar antenna of military airplanes can be reduced by using a low-temperature plasma screen. This paper gives a numerical and experimental analysis of this RCS-reduction method. The shape of the plasma screen was designed as a semi-ellipsoid in order to make full use of the space in the radar dome. In simulations, we discussed the scattering of the electromagnetic (EM) wave by a perfect electric conductor (PEC) covered with this plasma screen using the finite-difference-time-domain (FDTD) method. The variations of their return loss as a function of wave frequency, plasma density profile, and collision frequency were presented. In the experiments, a semi-ellipsoidal shaped plasma screen was produced. Electromagnetic attenuation of 1.5 GHz EM wave was measured for a radio frequency (RF) power of 5 kW at an argon pressure of 200-1150 Pa. A good agreement is found between simulated and experimental results. It can be confirmed that the plasma screen is useful in applications for stealth of radar antenna.

A novel method is introduced for preparing iron nanoparticles from iron pentacarbonyl using an atmospheric microwave plasma. The prepared iron nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The results show that the size of the particles can be controlled by adjusting the microwave power and the flow rate of the carrier gas. The magnetic properties of the synthesized iron particles were studied and a saturation magnetization of ∼95 emu/g was obtained. The convenient preparation process and considerable production rate were also found to be satisfactory for industrial applications.

In this paper, a pulsed discharge plasma (PDP) system with a multi-needle-to-plate electrodes geometry was set up to investigate the regeneration of acid orange 7 (AO7) exhausted granular activated carbon (GAC). Regeneration of GAC was studied under different conditions of peak pulse discharge voltage and water pH, as well as the modification effect of GAC by the pulse discharge process, to figure out the regeneration efficiency and the change of the GAC structure by the PDP treatment. The obtained results showed that there was an appropriate peak pulse voltage and an optimal initial pH value of the solution for GAC regeneration. Analyses of scanning electron microscope (SEM), Boehm titration, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), Horvath-Kawazoe (HK), and X-ray Diffraction (XRD) showed that there were more mesopore and macropore in the regenerated GAC and the structure turned smoother with the increase of discharge voltage; the amount of acidic functional groups on the GAC surface increased while the amount of basic functional groups decreased after the regeneration process. From the result of the XRD analysis, there were no new substances produced on the GAC after PDP treatment.

The first wall (FW) is one of the core components in ITER. As the heat sink material, the CuCrZr alloy shall be properly jointed with beryllium and stainless steel. At present, the grains of CuCrZr are prone to coarsen seriously in the thermal cycle process of FW manufacturing, which has become a critical issue for ITER parties. To investigate the mirostructure and mechanical properties of the optimized CuCrZr alloy in the first wall fabricating thermal cycle, simulative experiments have been done in this study. The alloy ingot was forged and hot rolled into plates, and then solid solution annealed, cold rolled and aged for strengthening. Several heat treatments were done to the CuCrZr samples, and the changes of microstructure, micro-hardness and tensile strength were investigated. The results indicated that the original elongated grains had changed into equiaxed ones, and the vickers hardness had declined to about 60 after experiencing the process of CuCrZr/316L(N) bi-metallic plate manufacturing, either by hot isostatic pressing at a higher temperature or by explosion welding followed by solution annealing. Joining Be/CuCrZr by hot isostatic pressing acts as an aging process for CuCrZr, so after the simulated heat treatment, the hardness of the alloy increased to about 110 HV and the tensile yield strength at 250°C rose to about 170 MPa. Meanwhile, the average grain size was controlled below 200 μm.

The magnetically insulated line oscillator (MILO) is a gigawatt-class, coaxial crossed-field microwave tube, which is at present a major hotspot in the field of high-power microwaves (HPM) research. In order to improve the power conversion efficiency and eliminate or at least minimize anode plasma formation in the load region and radio frequency (RF) breakdown in the slow wave structure (SWS) section, an X-band MILO is presented and investigated numerically with KARAT code. The design idea is briefly presented and the simulation results are given and discussed. In the simulation, HPM is generated with peak power of 3.4 GW, maximum electric field of about 1 MV/cm, and peak power conversion efficiency of 14.0%, when the voltage is 559.1 kV and the current is 43.2 kA. The microwave frequency is pure and falls in the X-band of 9.0 GHz. The theoretical investigation and the simulation results are given to prove that the anode plasma formation and the RF breakdown can be effectively avoided or at least minimized, respectively.

The tokamak plasma flows induced by the local radio frequency (RF) forces in the core region are analyzed. The effective components of local RF forces are composed of the momentum absorption term and the resonant parallel momentum transport term (i.e. the parallel component of the resonant ponderomotive forces). Different momentum balance relations are employed to calculate the plasma flows depending on different assumptions of momentum transport. With the RF fields solved from RF simulation codes, the toroidal and poloidal flows by these forces under the lower hybrid current drive and the mode conversion ion cyclotron resonance heating on EAST-like plasmas are evaluated.