Refined interpretation of electron temperature response to neutral beam injection at DIII-D

Accurate particle and power deposition profiles of neutral beam injection (NBI) are essential to transport studies, and that information is usually acquired through Monte Carlo simulations with a given collisional model. The deposition process of the energetic beam particles leads to the informative electron temperature (T-e) evolution trajectory, which can be captured by electron cyclotron emission (ECE) system due to its good spatial and temporal resolution. Previously, some work has been done to interpret the T-e responses to the pulsed NBI as a linear heating source with Fourier-based techniques, although that approach fell short when the fast ion slowing-down time becomes significant (similar to 100 ms). It has been observed in DIII-D that the modulated NBI pulses (10-50 Hz) reduce local core T-e values similar to 0.1 keV through cold electron dilution in high-T-e (>2 keV) plasmas alongside accumulative heating. Here, a novel approach to interpret the T-e response to NBI was developed by linearizing and modeling the detailed T-e evolution trajectory using coherently averaged ECE data based on the different time scales of the terms in the local power and particle balance equations. The technique does not require absolute calibrations of ECE and is independent of collisional models. The resulting beam deposition profiles show good consistency and reasonable agreement with Monte Carlo calculations based on the atomic data from the Atomic Data and Analysis Structure (ADAS). Local electron density response measured by Thomson scattering (TS) also suggests the same features when the beam pulse is large enough for that diagnostic to resolve. The remaining discrepancies are also discussed.