Effect of nuclear elastic scattering on ion heating characteristics in deuterium-tritium thermonuclear plasmas

An effect of nuclear elastic scattering (NES) on the energy transfer to plasma ions and electrons during (a) neutral beam injection (NBI) and (b) alpha-particle heating operations is examined on the basis of the Boltzmann-Fokker-Planck (BFP) equation for a beam ion and an alpha-particle in deuterium-tritium thermonuclear plasmas. The BFP calculations show that the enhancement in the fraction of the NBI heating power deposited to ions due to NES becomes appreciable when the beam energy is larger than 1 MeV. How the NES effect is influenced by the plasma condition is discussed. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.