UC Irvine

Effects of the energetic-ion-driven Geodesic Acoustic modes (GAM and E-GAM) on the toroidally passing energetic ions and the concomitant change of the neutron yield of beam-plasma fusion reactions in tokamaks are considered. It is shown that due to large perturbations of the plasma density, the resonant energetic ions driving the instability can be considerably slowed down for a few tens of the particle transit periods, which is much less than the collisional slowing down time. The time of the collisionless slowing down is actually determined by the period of the particle motion within the resonance island arising because of the GAM / E-GAM. Being trapped in the island, the resonant particles can not only lose their energy but also gain it. One more effect of GAMs is the flattening on the distribution function of the resonant particles. Due to conservation of the canonical angular momentum during a GAM / E-GAM instability, the change of the particle energy is accompanied by a radial displacement of the resonant particle for a distance up to the poloidal Larmor radius of energetic ions. The particles are displaced inwards or outwards, depending on the direction of their motion along the magnetic field. Expressions describing the change of the neutron yield due to GAM modes are derived. It is found that the distortion of the velocity distribution of the resonant particles can lead to a considerable drop of the neutron emission even when effects of the particle radial displacement are small. The developed theory is applied to an E-GAM experiment on the DIII-D tokamak. Relations for the period of the motion within the resonance island of passing (both well passing and marginally passing) particles and the width of the resonance of the energetic particles with GAM modes and low-frequency Alfvé modes are derived.