J.Q. Dong

Experimental progress on zonal flow physics in toroidal plasmas

The present status of experiments on zonal flows in magnetic confinement experiments is examined. The innovative use of traditional and modern diagnostics has revealed unambiguously the existence of zonal flows, their spatio-temporal characteristics, their relationship to turbulence and their effects on confinement. In particular, a number of observations have been accumulated on the oscillatory branch of zonal flows, named geodesic acoustic modes, suggesting the necessity for theories to give their proper description. In addition to these basic properties of zonal flows, several new methods have elucidated the processes of zonal flow generation from turbulence. Further investigation of the relationship between zonal flows and confinement is strongly encouraged as cross-device activity including low temperature, toroidal and linear devices.

Eigenmode analysis of geodesic acoustic modes

Geodesic acoustic modes (GAMs) are studied as plasma eigenmodes when an electrostatic potential nearly constant around a magnetic surface is applied to collisionless toroidal plasmas. Besides the standard GAM, a branch of low frequency mode and an infinite series of ion sound wavelike modes are identified. Eigenfrequencies of these modes are obtained analytically and numerically from a linear gyrokinetic model. The finite gyroradius effect is found to enhance the collisionless damping of the standard GAM, while this enhancement is not monotonic as the safety factor varies. Moreover, additional damping due to higher-harmonic resonances becomes important when the safety factor increases. The mode structure of the GAM is also discussed.

Spectral features of the geodesic acoustic mode and its interaction with turbulence in a tokamak plasma

The three-dimensional wavenumber and frequency spectrum for the geodesic acoustic mode (GAM) has been measured in the HuanLiuqi-2A tokamak for the first time. The spectrum provides definite evidence for the GAM, which is characterized by kθ=kϕ=0 and krρi≈0.04−0.09 with the full width at half-maximum Δkrρi≈0.03−0.07. The localized GAM packet is observed to propagate outward in the radial direction with nearly the same phase and group velocity. The envelopes of the radial electric field and density fluctuations are observed to be modulated by the GAM. By comparing the experimental result with that of the envelope analysis using model signals, the mechanism of the envelope modulation has been identified. The results strongly suggest that the envelope modulation of the Er fluctuations is dominantly caused by the direct regulation of the GAM during the GAM generation in the energy-conserving triad interaction, and the envelope modulation of the density fluctuations is induced by the GAM shearing effect, which...

ELM mitigation by supersonic molecular beam injection into the H-mode pedestal in the HL-2A tokamak

Density profiles in the pedestal region (H-mode) are measured in HL-2A and the characteristics of the density pedestal are described. Cold particle deposition by supersonic molecular beam injection (SMBI) within the pedestal is verified. Edge-localized mode (ELM) mitigation by SMBI into the H-mode pedestal is demonstrated and the relevant physics is elucidated. The sensitivity of the effect to SMBI pressure and duration is studied. Following SMBI, the ELM frequency increases and the ELM amplitude decreases for a finite duration. Increases in ELM frequency of are achieved. This experiment argues that the ELM mitigation results from an increase in higher frequency fluctuations and transport events in the pedestal, which are caused by SMBI. These inhibit the occurrence of large transport events which span the entire pedestal width. The observed change in the density pedestal profiles and edge particle flux spectrum with and without SMBI supports this interpretation. An analysis of the experiment and a model shows that ELMs can be mitigated by SMBI with shallow particle penetration into the pedestal.

Preliminary results of ELMy H-mode experiments on the HL-2A tokamak

Typical ELMy H-mode discharges have been achieved on the HL-2A tokamak with combined auxiliary heating of NBI and ECRH. The minimum power required is about 1.1 MW at a density of 1.6 × 1019 m−3 and increases with a decrease in density, almost independent of the launching order of the ECRH and NBI heating. The energy loss by each edge localized mode (ELM) burst is estimated to be lower than 3% of the total stored energy. At a frequency of typically 400 Hz, the energy confinement time is only marginally reduced by the ELMs. The supersonic molecular beam injection fuelling is found to be beneficial for triggering an L–H transition due to less induced recycling and higher fuelling efficiency. The dwell time of the L–H transition is 20–200 ms, and tends to decrease as the power increases. The delay time of the H–L transition is 10–30 ms for most discharges and is comparable to the energy confinement time. The ELMs with a period of 1–3 ms are sustained for more than ten times the energy confinement time with enhanced confinement factor H89 > 1.5, which tends to decrease with the total heating power. The confinement time in the H-mode discharges increases with plasma current approximately linearly.

Towards an emerging understanding of non-locality phenomena and non-local transport

In this paper, recent progress on experimental analysis and theoretical models for non-local transport (non-Fickian fluxes in real space) is reviewed. The non-locality in the heat and momentum transport observed in the plasma, the departures from linear flux-gradient proportionality, and externally triggered non-local transport phenomena are described in both L-mode and improved-mode plasmas. Ongoing evaluation of ‘fast front’ and ‘intrinsically non-local’ models, and their success in comparisons with experimental data, are discussed

Overview of experimental results on HL-2A

Significant experimental advances have been made on the HL-2A tokamak along with substantial improvement and development of the hardware. A spontaneous particle transport barrier has been observed in Ohmic discharges without any external momentum input. The barrier was evidenced by a density perturbation study using modulated supersonic molecular beam injection (SMBI) and microwave reflectometry. The new features of the non-local transport effect induced with SMBI have been analysed. The three-dimensional spectral structures of the low frequency zonal flow, the geodesic acoustic mode (GAM) and the quasi-mode-like low frequency fluctuations have been observed simultaneously for the first time. In addition, the spectral structure of the density fluctuations of GAM was also identified. The e-fishbone instability excited by energetic electrons deviated from Maxwellian distribution has been investigated via a 10-channel CdTe hard x-ray detector. It was found that the e-fishbone was correlated with the existence of energetic electrons of 30–70 keV. The MHD experiment has indicated that the suppression of m/n = 2/1 tearing modes may be sustained by ECRH modulation at a frequency of about 10 Hz.

ELM mitigation by supersonic molecular beam injection: KSTAR and HL-2A experiments and theory

We report recent experimental results from HL-2A and KSTAR on ELM mitigation by supersonic molecular beam injection (SMBI). Cold particle deposition within the pedestal by SMBI is verified in both machines. The signatures of ELM mitigation by SMBI are an ELM frequency increase and ELM amplitude decrease. These persist for an SMBI influence time τI. Here, τI is the time for the SMBI influenced pedestal profile to refill. An increase in and a decrease in the energy loss per ELM ΔWELM were achieved in both machines. Physical insight was gleaned from studies of density and vΦ (toroidal rotation velocity) evolution, particle flux and turbulence spectra, divertor heat load. The characteristic gradients of the pedestal density soften and a change in vΦ was observed during a τI time. The spectra of the edge particle flux and density fluctuation with and without SMBI were measured in HL-2A and in KSTAR, respectively. A clear phenomenon observed is the decrease in divertor heat load during the τI time in HL-2A. Similar results are the profiles of saturation current density Jsat with and without SMBI in KSTAR. We note that τI/τp (particle confinement time) is close to ∼1, although there is a large difference in individual τI between the two machines. This suggests that τI is strongly related to particle-transport events. Experiments and analysis of a simple phenomenological model support the important conclusion that ELM mitigation by SMBI results from an increase in higher frequency fluctuations and transport events in the pedestal.

Overview of experimental results on the HL-2A tokamak

The physics experiments on the HL-2A tokamak have been focused on confinement improvement, particle and thermal transport, zonal flow and turbulence, filament characteristics, energetic particle induced modes and plasma fuelling efficiency since 2008. ELMy H-mode discharges are achieved in a lower density regime using a combination of NBI heating with ECRH. The power threshold is found to increase with a decrease in density, almost independent of the launching order of the ECRH and NBI heating power. The pedestal density profiles in the H-mode discharges are measured. The particle outward convection is observed during the pump-out transient phase with ECRH. The negative density perturbation (pump-out) is observed to propagate much faster than the positive one caused by out-gassing. The core electron thermal transport reduction triggered by far off-axis ECRH switch-off is investigated. The coexistence of low frequency zonal flow (LFZF) and geodesic acoustic mode (GAM) is observed. The dependence of the intensities of LFZFs and GAMs on the safety factor and ECRH power is identified. The 3D spatial structures of plasma filaments are measured in the boundary plasma and large-scale structures along a magnetic field line analysed for the first time. The beta-induced Alfven eigenmodes (BAEs), excited by large magnetic islands (m-BAE) and by energetic electrons (e-BAE), are observed. The results for the study of fuelling efficiency and penetration characteristics of supersonic molecular beam injection (SMBI) are described.

Spectral characteristics of geodesic acoustic mode in the HL-2A tokamak

The spectral characteristics of the geodesic acoustic mode (GAM) are investigated systematically by applying the two-point correlation technique and bispectral analysis to electric field fluctuations measured by electrostatic probe arrays on the HuanLiuqi-2A (HL-2A) tokamak. The three-dimensional wavenumber and frequency spectrum for the GAM has been measured for the first time. The spectrum provides definite evidence for the GAM which is characterized by kθ = k = 0 and krρi ≈ 0.04–0.09 with the full width at half maximum Δkrρi ≈ 0.03–0.07. The radial wavenumber spectrum shows that the localized GAM packet propagates in the outward direction with approximately the same phase and group velocity. The cross-bicoherences involving the Reynolds stress and auto-bicoherences of potential ( ), radial electric field ( ) and density ( ) fluctuations have been estimated for comparisons. Strong nonlinear coupling between the GAM and broadband turbulence is observed in all summed bicoherences, except for the summed auto-bicoherence of density fluctuations. All cross- and auto-bicoherences, except for the auto-bicoherence of density fluctuations, for interactions satisfying f1 + f2 = fGAM are found to have a peaked feature in the frequency range f1 < 100 kHz. This peaked feature might reflect the resonance property in the nonlinear coupling between the GAM and ambient turbulence.