Estimation of heat loads on the wall structures in parasitic absorption of lower hybrid power

Parasitic absorption of the short wavelength modes of the LH spectrum is a probable reason for the hot spots seen in the grill region of several tokamaks. Experiments suggest that the heat loads on the wall structures depend on the coupled power. In this work, the parasitic absorption of LH power was studied with self-consistent particle-in-cell simulations. The launched spectra were obtained from the SWAN coupling code. The power and temperature dependences of the absorption in the near field of the LH grill were investigated with a series of simulations. The parasitic absorption was found to grow from 0.6 to 1.1% when the coupled power increased from 26 to 67 MW/m(2). When the edge temperature rose from 12.5 to 100 eV, the absorption increased from 0.4 to 1.7%. The maximum kinetic energies were between 0.6 and 1.8 keV. Estimates for the heat loads and surface temperature of the grill limiter are also obtained. The absorption leads to heat loads between 1.5 and 13 MW/m(2) and surface temperatures of 510-2390 degrees C.