This Letter provides information on the spatial and temporal structure of periodic eruptions observed in magnetically confined laboratory fusion plasmas, called edge-localized modes (ELMs), and highlights similarities with solar eruptions. Taken together, the observations presented in this Letter provide strong evidence for ELMs being associated wi…
The nature of intermittency, long observed in magnetic fusion devices, was revisited lately [G. Antar et al. , Phys. Rev. Lett. 87 , 065001 (2001)]. It was shown that intermittency is caused by large-scale events with high radial velocity reaching about 1/10th of the sound speed. These type of structures were named ‘‘avaloids.’’ In the pres…
Results from MAST provide a first test of neoclassical tearing mode physics in the spherical tokamak (ST). The mode accounts for the main performance limit in conventional tokamaks. Its behavior in the ST is remarkably well described by existing theoretical models, although it is more readily seeded by sawtooth events in these scenarios. Modeling c…