EFDA-JET-CP(03)01/50
Hot Spots Generated by Lower Hybrid Waves on JET
Hot spots in the divertor region have been observed on JET during Lower Hybrid (LH) Current Drive (CD) experiments. The most probable reason is the fast electron generation by parasitic absorption of LH power in front of the grill, as observed in LHCD experiments on Tore Supra and TdeV tokamaks. With parasitic absorption we here mean the absorption of the very high n|| modes of the spectrum, with n|| > 20. The parallel heat fluxes on Tore Supra grill limiters were typically 5­10MW/m2 but in extreme cases up to 30MW/m2 were measured. In recent JET experiments, series of hot spots have been detected on the inner and outer divertor apron, which are magnetically connected to the LH grill region. The LH power level in these experiments was between PLH = 1 and 3MW and strong gas injection near the grill was used to improve the coupling. However, in some cases excess of gas in front of the grill may increase the heat flux to the magnetically connected components.