Status Of The ELISE Test Facility

The neutral beam test facility ELISE (Extraction from a Large Ion Source Exper iment), located at the Max - Planck - Institut für Plasmaphysik (IPP) in Garching, is operational since beginning of 2013. ELISE, equipped with a large RF driven ion source (1x0.9 m 2 with an extraction area of 0.1 m 2 ) of half the size of the ion source for the ITER neutral beam injection (NBI) system, is an important step in the European R&D roadmap for the construction of the neutral beam heating systems, defined by the ITER domestic agency F4E. The early experience of the operation of such a large RF driven s ource will give an important input for the design of the Neutral Beam Test Facility PRIMA in Padova and the ITER NBI systems and for their commissioning and operating phases. The paper summarizes the results of ELISE operation in the last two years, both for hydrogen and in deuterium, for the different experimental programs: (1) low RF power operation without and with Cs, (2) short pulse, high RF power operation, and finally (3) long pulse, high RF power operation. It discusses critical issues like Cs con ditioning and long pulse stability, and the dependence of the source and beam performance on operational parameters.