Role of turbulence and electric fields in the establishment of improved confinement in tokamak plasmas

An extensive (INTAS) research programme started in 2002 to investigate the correlations between on the one hand the occurrence of transport barriers and improved confinement in the medium-size tokamaks TEXTOR and T-10 and on the smaller tokamaks FT-2, TUMAN-3M and CASTOR, and on the other hand electric fields, modified magnetic shear and electrostatic and magnetic turbulence using advanced diagnostics with high spatial and temporal resolution and of various active means to externally control plasma transport . This has been done in a strongly coordinated way and exploiting the complementarity of TEXTOR and T-10 and the backup potential of the three other tokamaks, which together have all the relevant experimental tools and theoretical expertise

Tokamak plasma self-organization-synergetics of magnetic trap plasmas

Analysis of a wide range of experimental results in plasma magnetic confinement investigations shows that in most cases, plasmas are self-organized. In the tokamak case, it is realized in the self-consistent pressure profile, which permits the tokamak plasma to be macroscopically MHD stable. Existing experimental data permit suggesting a hypothesis about the mechanism of pressure profile regulation and to give an explanation of such unusual phenomena as a nonlocal character of transport coefficients, enhanced speed of heat/cold pulse propagation and many modes of tokamak operation