Effects of Non‐Maxwellian Plasma Species on ICRF Propagation and Absorption in Toroidal Magnetic Confinement Devices

Auxiliary heating supplied by externally launched electromagnetic waves is commonly used in toroidal magnetically confined fusion experiments for profile control via localized heating, current drive and perhaps flow shear. In these experiments, the confined plasma is often characterized by the presence of a significant population of non‐thermal species arising from neutral beam injection, from acceleration of the particles by the applied waves, or from copious fusion reactions in future devices. Such non‐thermal species may alter the wave propagation as well as the wave absorption dynamics in the plasma. Previous studies have treated the corresponding velocity distributions as either equivalent Maxwellians, or else have included realistic distributions only in the finite Larmor radius limit. In this work, the hot plasma dielectric response of the plasma has been generalized to treat arbitrary distribution functions in the non‐relativistic limit. The generalized dielectric tensor has been incorporated into...