More economical fusion reactors might be enabled through the cyclic operation of lower hybrid current drive. The first stage of cyclic operation would be to ramp up the plasma current with lower hybrid waves alone in low-density plasma. Such a current ramp-up was carried out successfully on the EAST tokamak. The plasma current was ramped up with a time-averaged rate of 18 kA/s with lower hybrid (LH) power. The average conversion efficiency P el /P LH was about 3%. Over a transient phase, faster ramp-up was obtained. These experiments feature a separate measurement of the L/R time at the time of current ramp up. V C 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.

Aiming at a fusion reactor, two issues must be solved for the lower hybrid current drive (LHCD), namely good lower hybrid wave (LHW)-plasma coupling and effective current drive at high density. For this goal, efforts have been made to improve LHW-plasma coupling and current drive capability at high density in experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST). LHW-plasma coupling is improved by means of local gas puffing and gas puffing from the electron side is taken as a routine way for EAST to operate with LHCD. Studies of high density experiments suggest that low recycling and high lower hybrid (LH) frequency are preferred for LHCD experiments at high density, consistent with previous results in other machines. With the combination of 2.45 GHz and 4.6 GHz LH waves, a repeatable high confinement mode plasma with maximum density up to 4.5 × 10 19 m −3 was obtained by LHCD in EAST. In addition, in the first stage of LHCD cyclic operation, an alternative candidate for more economical fusion reactors has been demonstrated in EAST and further work will be continued.