It is planned to upgrade the TCV Auxiliary Heating system by increasing its power with an additional 2 MW in the ECRH-ECCD system and with the installation of a 1 MW Neutral Beam Heating system .This power increase allows a significant extension of the TCV operational domain towards ITER relevance, as well as enhancing fundamental physics studies of magnetically confined plasmas such as H-mode plasmas with a snowflake divertor.
Simulations with the transport code ASTRA (see figure below) show a wider range of βN attainable with the upgraded system. The Te to Ti ratio will also be more ITER relevant.
The upgrade in the TCV ECRH-ECCD system also includes an improvement of the control of the microwave polarization in one transmission line of the X2 gyrotrons by the installation of fast-acting polarizer mirrors .