P Tamain A Kirk E Nardon B Dudson B Hnat The Mast Team
The impact of Resonant Magnetic Perturbations (RMPs) on the edge of MAST L-mode plasmas is studied using a mid-plane reciprocating probe equipped with a Gundestrup probe head. A strong impact on the characteristics of the ion saturation current fluctuations is observed just inside the separatrix, with a broadening of the power spectrum and an asymm…
PublishedJ. Huang S. Lisgo G. Maddison The Mast Team
The retention of deuterium fuel during MAST discharges has been studied using the method of global gas balance. The results show that with inter-shot 4 He- GDC, the total number of particles retained for a discharge increases with total number of injected particles, and the total retention fraction stays very high, mostly around 80%, and can be alm…
PublishedM-D Hua IT Chapman AR Field RJ Hastie SD Pinches The Mast Team
Plasma rotation in tokamaks is of special interest for its potential stabilising effect on micro- and macro instabilities, leading to increased confinement. In MAST, the torque from Neutral Beam Injection (NBI) can spin the plasma to a core velocity ~ 300km.s -1 (Alfven Mach number ~ 0.3). Low density plasmas often exhibit a weakly non-monotonic sa…
PublishedIT Chapman M-D Hua SD Pinches RJ Akers AR Field JP Graves RJ Hastie CA Michael The Mast Team
MAST plasmas with a safety factor above unity and a profile with either weakly reversed shear, or broad low shear regions, regularly exhibit long-lived saturated ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities. The toroidal rotation is flattened in the presence of such perturbations and the fast ion losses are enhanced. These ideal modes, distinguish…
PublishedIT Chapman JP Graves C Wahlberg The Mast Team
The sensitivity of the stability of the ideal n = 1 internal kink mode to variations in the plasma profiles is analysed both analytically and numerically in rotating tokamak plasmas. These stability analyses have been carried out including the centrifugal effects of toroidal plasma rotation upon the equilibrium, and also inconsistently when the equ…
PublishedA. Kirk T. O’Gorman S. Saarelma R. Scannell H.R. Wilson The Mast Team
The H-mode pedestal characteristics on MAST are measured in a variety of Connected Double Null (CDN) and Single Null Divertor (SND) discharges. In CDN discharges the edge density pedestal width in spatial co-ordinates is similar on both the high and low field sides suggesting that the width may be determined by neutral penetration. However, in SND …
PublishedI. T. Chapman M. F. De Bock S. D. Pinches M. R. Turnyanskiy Mast Team V. G. Igochine M. Maraschek G. Tardini Asdex Upgrade Team
Sawtooth behavior has been investigated in plasmas heated with off-axis neutral beam injection in ASDEX Upgrade [A. Herrmann and O. Gruber, Fusion Sci. Technol. 44 , 569 (2003)] and the Mega-Ampere Spherical Tokamak MAST [A. Sykes and et al. , Nucl. Fusion 41 , 1423 (2001)]. Provided that the fast ions are well confined, the sawtooth period is foun…
PublishedA.Kirk E.Nardon R.Akers M.Bécouleta G.Detemmerman B.Dudsonb B.Hnatc Y.Q.Liu R.Martin P.Tamain D.Taylor The Mast Team
Experiments have been performed on MAST using both external (n=1,2) and internal (n=3) resonant magnetic perturbation coils. ELM suppression has not been achieved even though vacuum modelling shows that either set of coils can produce a region for which the Chirikov parameter is greater than 1 wider than that required to produce ELM suppression in …
PublishedV.F.Shevchenko M.R.O’Brien D.Taylor Mast Team
Electron Bernstein wave (EBW) assisted plasma current start-up has been demonstrated for the first time in a tokamak. It was shown that plasma currents up to 17 kA can be generated non- inductively by 100 kW of RF power injected. With optimized vertical field ramps, plasma currents up to 33 kA have been achieved without the use of solenoid flux. It…
Published