Perturbative study of energetic particle redistribution by Alfvén eigenmodes in ITER

The modification of particle distributions by magnetohydrodynamic modes is an important topic for magnetically confined plasmas. Low amplitude modes are known to be capable of producing significant modification of injected neutral beam profiles. Flattening of a distribution due to phase mixing in an island or due to portions of phase space becoming stochastic is a process extremely rapid on the time scale of equilibrium parameter changes in an experiment. In this paper, we examine the effect of toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes (TAE) and reversed shear Alfvén eigenmodes (RSAE) in ITER on alpha particle and injected beam distributions using theoretically predicted mode amplitudes using perturbative linear theory. It is found that for the equilibrium of a hybrid scenario even at ten times the predicted saturation level the modes have negligible effect on these distributions. A strongly reversed shear (or advanced) scenario, having a spectrum of modes that are much more global, is somewhat more susceptible to induced loss due to mode resonance, with alpha particle losses of over 1% with predicted amplitudes and somewhat larger with the assistance of toroidal field ripple. The elevated q profile contributes to stronger TAE (RSAE) drive and more unstable modes. An analysis of the existing mode-particle resonances is carried out to determine which modes are responsible for the profile modification and induced loss. We find that losses are entirely due to resonance with the counter-moving and trapped particle populations, with co-moving passing particles participating in resonances only deep within the plasma core and not leading to loss.