Transport studies using perturbative experiments

By inducing a small electron temperature perturbation in a plasma in steady state one can in principle determine the conductive and convective components of the electron heat flux, and the associated thermal diffusivity and convection velocity. The same can be done for other plasma, parameters, like density or ion temperature. In this paper experimental and analysis techniques are briefly reviewed. The fundamental question whether the fluxes are linear functions of the gradients or not is discussed. Experimental results are summarized, including so-called 'non-local' phenomena

Degraded confinement and turbulence in tokamak experiments

After a review on the state of tokamak transport theory, the methodology to derive experimental results will be described. Examples of confinement in ohmic plasmas and the deterioration with additional healing will be given. Some examples of improved confinement; modes will be discussed

Comparison of bifurcation dynamics of turbulent transport models for the L-H transition

In more than three decades, a large amount of models and mechanisms have been proposed to describe a very beneficial feature of magnetically confined fusion plasmas: the L-H transition. Bifurcation theory can be used to compare these different models based on their dynamical transition structure. In this paper, we employ bifurcation theory to distinguish two fundamentally different descriptions of the interaction between turbulence levels and sheared flows. The analytic bifurcation analysis characterises the parameter space structure of the transition dynamics. Herewith, in these models three dynamically different types of transitions are characterised, sharp transitions, oscillatory transitions, and smooth transitions. One of the two models has a very robust transition structure and is therefore likely to be more accurate for such a robust phenomenon as the L-H transition. The other model needs more fine-tuning to get non-oscillatory transitions. These conclusions from the analytic bifurcation analysis are confirmed by dedicated numerical simulations, with the newly developed code Bifurcato