J. W. Connor R. J. Hastie H. R. Wilson R. L. Miller
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…
PublishedJ. B. Taylor J. W. Connor P. Helander
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…
PublishedT. Fülöp Peter J. Catto P. Helander
Bulk ion flow can be modified by ion–neutral interactions in the edge region of tokamaks where neutral atoms are abundant. In this region, the standard neoclassical expression for the ion flow is not consistent with the experimental observations. Previous work in the plateau regime [Valanju et al., Phys. Fluids B 4, 2675 (1992)] suggests that the…
PublishedPeter J. Catto P. Helander J. W. Connor R. D. Hazeltine
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…
PublishedT. Fülöp Peter J. Catto P. Helander
Ion plasma flow and flow shear just inside the last closed flux surface of a tokamak can be strongly altered by neutral atoms and anomalous effects. For a collisional edge, neutrals modify the standard Pfirsch–Schluter expression for the parallel ion flow through the strong coupling provided by ion–neutral collisions. Even for rather small neut…
PublishedP. Helander
The theory of neoclassical transport in an impure, toroidal plasma is extended to allow for steeper pressure and temperature gradients than are usually considered. It is found that the ion particle flux is a nonmonotonic function of these gradients for plasma parameters typical of the tokamak edge. A sudden transition between states of low and high…
PublishedR. O. Dendy P. Helander
Self-organized criticality ~SOC! often features in sandpile-type modeling of complex systems such as magnetic fusion plasmas, but its observed role in real sandpiles is equivocal. Here, a probabilistic model displaying some of the observed phenomenology of real sandpiles is proposed. It generates avalanches involving particle loss that, like most e…
PublishedD. C. Mcdonald R. A. Cairns C. N. Lashmore-Davies G. Le Clair
Detailed ray tracing, of wave propagation in a plasma near electron cyclotron resonances, suggests that refraction can lead to reduced absorption, in some cases. By studying the full wave equation for the ordinary wave near the fundamental, in a slab model, it is shown that such refraction does indeed reduce absorption, for this particular case, bu…
PublishedA. Thyagaraja
This paper and a forthcoming one develop the spectral theory of ballooning transformations relevant to tokamak physics from rst principles in a rigorous and yet intuitively clear manner. The power of the ballooning representation to throw light on the spectral characteristics of the plasma problems to which it is applicable is emphasized, and examp…
Published