First Achievement of Plasma Heating for EAST Neutral Beam Injector

As one of the most effective methods for plasma heating, a neutral beam injector (NBI) achieved plasma heating and current driving for the first time in EAST 2014 experimental campaign. According to the research plan of the EAST physics experiment, the first NBI (EAST- NBI-1) has been built and become operational in 2014. In this article, the latest experiment results of EAST-NBI-1 are reported as follows: (1) EAST achieves H-mode plasma in the case of NBI heating alone, (2) EAST achieves 22 s long pulse stable H-mode plasma in the case of simultaneous NBI and lower hybrid wave (LHW) heating. The measurement data show that the loop voltage decreased and the plasma stored energy increased obviously. The results indicate that EAST-NBI-1 has achieved plasma heating and current driving, and thus lays a foundation for the construction of EAST-NBI-2, which will be built in a few months this year.