Fast ion behavior during neutral beam injection in ATF

In stellarators, single-particle confinement properties can be more complex than in their tokamak counterparts. Fast-ion behavior in tokamaks has been well characterized through an abundance of measurements on various devices and in general has been shown to be consistent with classical slowing-down theory, although anomalous ion behavior has been observed during intense beam injection in ISX-B, during fishbone instabilities in PDX, and in experiments on TFR. In contrast, fast ion behavior in stellarators is not as wel established experimentally with the primary experiments to date focusing o near-perpendicular or perpendicular neutral beam injection (NBI) on the Wendelstein 7-A stellarator (91 and Heliotron-E. This paper addresses fast-ion confinement properties in a large-aspect-ratio, moderate-shear stellarator, the Advanced Toroidal Facility, during tangential NBI. The primary data used in this study are the experimentally measured energy spectra of charge-exchange neutrals escaping from the plasma, using a two-dimensional scanning neutral particle analyzer. This diagnostic method is well established, having been used on several devices since the early 1970`s. Various aspects of fast-ion behavior are investigated by comparing these data with computed theoretical spectra based on energeticion distributions derived from the fastion Fokker-Planck equation. Ion orbits are studied by computer orbit following, by the computation ofmore » J* surfaces, and by Monte Carlo calculations.« less