MeV Light Atom Beams for Heating and/or Diagnostics of Tokamak Plasmas

We have studied the possible usefulness and feasibility of multi-MeV beams of light atoms (6 ¿ A ¿ 30) for applications in magnetically confined plasmas. These potential applications include plasma heating or current drive, and as a diagnostic to probe the velocity distribution function of the confined energetic alpha particles which result from fusion reactions between deuterium and tritium. The combined current and energy requirements for these applications appear to preclude the use of electrostatic acceleration. However, electric-quadrupole-focused RF linear accelerators such as the radio frequency quadrupole (being developed at LASL) or the MEQALAC (at BNL) appear to be promising technologies.