Abstract of FWTOR-15 Project

In the topic of electromagnetic wave propagation in tokamak plasmas, the mainstream in theory and applications is oriented to frequency-domain asymptotic methods assuming linear plasma response, where the solution of the wave-plasma system is more tractable. However, in many cases of practical interest, like O-X-B mode conversion, high-power ECRH and mm-diagnostics, this approach generally breaks down. In such problems, asymptotic methods are in principle robust in still providing a meaningful solution, however the results should be validated against a full-wave solution. FWTOR is a Fortran 95 full-wave code which solves Maxwell's equations for the propagation of electromagnetic wave beams in tokamak plasmas implementing the FDTD method. The plasma response is formulated in terms of the generated electric current, the magnetic equilibrium can be analytic or experimental (tabulated data) including magnetic perturbations (e.g. due to NTMs) and density fluctuations (e.g. due to edge turbulence), while the wave beam profile can be of arbitrary shape. The purpose of the code is to conduct thorough investigations of the electromagnetic propagation, absorption and current drive in plasma geometry relevant to EC/IC/LH applications in ITER H&CD, reflectometry/interferometry and MHD control, as well as to perform benchmarks against the currently established tools in the field. A disadvantage in the current version of the code is that it is not parallelized optimally. The central aim of this project (in collaboration with the HLST team) is to conduct code parallelization in an OpenMP, MPI or hybrid scheme, as well as to include restart functionality in the code.