Plasma and Fusion Research

Volume 14, 3401134 (2019)

Regular Articles

Simulation of Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in a Magnetospheric Plasma
Takahiro MORI1), Masaki NISHIURA1,2), Zensho YOSHIDA1), Naoki KENMOCHI1), Shotaro KATSURA1), Kaori NAKAMURA1), Yuuki YOKOTA1), Toru I. TSUJIMURA2) and Shin KUBO2)
1)
Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8561, Japan
2)
National Institute for Fusion Science, Toki 509-5292, Japan
(Received 8 January 2019 / Accepted 8 May 2019 / Published 14 August 2019)

Abstract

The Ring Trap 1 (RT-1) device creates a laboratory magnetosphere, that is motivated by the Jovian magnetosphere, which contains self-organized, high-beta plasmas. In the RT-1 plasmas, the density limit for 8.2 GHz electron cyclotron heating (ECH) occurs at the electron densities 8.0×1017 m−3 and for 2.45 GHz ECH, 1.6×1017 m−3. We have used full-wave simulations to study the propagation and absorption of electromagnetic waves in the RT-1 plasmas in an effort to understand the observed density limits as well as the over-dense state in which the actual density exceeds the cutoff density of the magnetospheric plasma. The simulation results cannot explain the experimentally observed over-dense states and density limits in the view of the power absorption. We discuss possible reasons for the gap between the experiments and the simulation results.

Keywords

magnetospheric plasma, ECH, electron cyclotron wave, electric field, over dense plasma, electromagnetic wave propagation

DOI: 10.1585/pfr.14.3401134

Full Text

PDF format (3.2Mbytes) PDF Download

References

  • [1] Z. Yoshida et al., Phys. Plasmas 17, 112507 (2010).
  • [2] M. Nishiura et al., Nucl. Fusion 55, 053019 (2015).
  • [3] T.H. Stix, Waves in Plasmas (AIP press, 1992).
  • [4] K. Miyamoto, Plasma Physics for Controlled Fusion (Iwanami Book, 2012).
  • [5] I. Fidone et al., Phys. Fluids 21, 645 (1978).
  • [6] H.P. Laqua et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 3467 (1997).
  • [7] R. Ikeda et al., Contrib. Plasma Phys. 50, 567 (2010).
  • [8] K. Uchijima et al., Plasma Fusion Res. 6, 2401122 (2011).