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2001
The polarization current plays an important role in the evolution of magnetic islands with a width comparable to the characteristic ion orbit width. Understanding the evolution of such small magnetic islands is important for two reasons: (1) to investigate the threshold mechanisms for growth of large-scale islands (e.g., neoclassical tearing modes)…
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2000
H -mode operation has been achieved in high current I p . 200 kA plasmas in the START spherical tokamak for both neutral-beam-injection-heated and Ohmic discharges. The transition to H mode features the development of well-defined edge pedestals in density and temperature, which signifies the formation of an edge-transport barrier, and associated e…
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2000
The finite resistivity of the wall that surrounds any toroidal plasma confinement device can lead to a branch of instabilities known as the resistive wall mode (RWM). Theory indicates that the RWM is potentially activated whenever the plasma equilibrium is unstable with the wall placed at infinity. In particular, advanced tokamak power plant design…
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2000
A model is developed to analyze the stabilization of the resistive wall mode (RWM) by plasma rotation. Central to the model is a cylindrical plasma that is ideal magnetohydrodynamic unstable in the absence of a wall, and possesses an internal resonance [J. M. Finn, Phys. Plasmas 2 , 198 (1995)]. This system is then a qualitative model for the actua…
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1999
The possibility of stabilizing ideal magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) instabilities by resistive walls and slow plasma rotation (rotation frequencies comparable to resistive tearing growth rates) was proposed recently by Finn [Phys. Plasmas 2 , 3782 (1995)] on the basis of cylindrical theory. In the present paper we analyze toroidal effects (pressure gr…
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1999
It has been suggested [Kleva and Guzdar, Phys. Plasmas 6 , 116 (1999)] that reconnecting ballooning modes in which electron inertia replaces resistivity in a nonideal magnetohydrodynamic Ohm’s law can have substantial growth rates in the low collisionality regime. Numerical calculation, albeit necessarily at unrealistically large values of the co…
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1999
The ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability of the tokamak edge is analyzed, with particular emphasis on radially localized instabilities; it is proposed that these are responsible for edge pressure gradient limits and edge localized modes (ELMS). Data and stability calculations from DIII-D [to appear in Proceedings of the 16th International Conf…
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1998
The edge plasma of a tokamak is affected by atomic physics processes and can have density and temperature variations along the magnetic field that strongly modify edge transport. A closed system of equations in the Pfirsch–Schluter regime is presented that can be solved for the radial and poloidal variation of the plasma density, electron and ion…
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1998
Transport barriers and transitions between modes of low and high confinement in tokamak plasmas are often attributed to suppression of turbulence by a shear flow related to a plasma gradient, e.g., of density. However, such shear flow is also affected by the second derivative of density. When this is introduced there is no unique relation between f…
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1998
A new formalism for analyzing the magnetohydrodynamic stability of a limiter tokamak edge plasma is developed. Two radially localized, high toroidal mode number n instabilities are studied in detail: a peeling mode and an edge ballooning mode. The peeling mode, driven by edge current density and stabilized by edge pressure gradient, has features wh…
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