Results of ICRF Heating Experiments from the EAST 2010 Campaign

Radio frequency (RF) plasma heating in ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) was successfully performed on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). This is mainly because lithium wall conditioning was routinely used to reduce both impurity and hydrogen (H) recycling and to improve the ICRF power absorption. Mainly ICRF heating of the H minority regime at 27 MHz has been applied in deuterium plasmas. The ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) is found to depend strongly on plasma preheating. The ICRH efficiency can be much improved in conjunction with the lower hybrid wave (LHW). Effective ion and electron heating was observed with the H minority heating mode. The increase of the stored energy reached 30 kJ in L-mode plasma by using the ICRF power of 1.0 MW alone when the H cyclotron resonance layer was at plasma center.