Secondary instability as cause of minor disruptions in density limit tokamak plasmas

Experimental evidence was found in JET plasmas of a new instability at the onset of minor disruptions. This instability is observed during the growth of the well known m/n=2/1 magnetic island and is localized close to it, behaving as a secondary instability to the island. The large heat fluxes towards the plasma edge, characteristic of minor disruptions, occur during the low rotation phase of the magnetic island at a time the amplitude of the secondary instability suffers a large increase. No poloidal or toroidal mode numbers could be assigned to the secondary instability

High resolution temperature and density profiles during the energy quench of density limit disruptions in Rijnhuizen tokamak project

Measurements of the electron temperature, Te, and density, ne, during the energy quench of a major disruption showed that the onset of Te erosion in the neighborhood of the m/n = 2/1 O point at the low field side (LFS) accelerates the well-known m/n = 1/1 erosion of the core temperature. During this phase Te(r) is only partially flat in the region between the q = 2 and the q = 1 surfaces and ne(r) decreases in the core and increases inside the m/n = 2/1 island. Immediately after the flattening of Te(r) a large peak in Te and to a lesser extent in ne has been observed. This peak is radially localized at the q = 2 radius at the LFS, is very short lived and is poloidally asymmetric. Te profiles measured by the heterodyne radiometer and the Thomson scattering agree very well up to the time Te(r) flattens but afterwards can be a factor of two different

Interplay between intrinsic plasma rotation and magnetic island evolution in disruptive discharges

The behavior of the intrinsic toroidal rotation of the plasma column during the growth and eventualsaturation of m/n = 2/1 magnetic islands, triggered by programmed density rise, has been carefully investigatedin disruptive discharges in TCABR. The results show that, as the island starts to grow and rotate at aspeed larger than that of the plasma column, the angular frequency of the intrinsic toroidal rotation increasesand that of the island decreases, following the expectation of synchronization. As the island saturates at alarge size, just before a major disruption, the angular speed of the intrinsic rotation decreases quite rapidly,even though the island keeps still rotating at a reduced speed. This decrease of the toroidal rotation is quitereproducible and can be considered as an indicative of disruption

Observation of secondary instability of 2/1 magnetic island in compass high density limit plasmas

Density limit disruptions (DLDs) have been observed in tokamak plasmas when high density regimes are explored. The DLDs are harmless in small size tokamaks like COMPASS,larger tokamaks like JET try to avoid them and they are extremely undesirable in ITER sizetokamaks due to the severe structural damages they can cause. It is very important to understand the dynamics of the DLDs so that better strategies to ameliorate or avoid them can bedeveloped. In this work, following detection in JET [1] of a secondary instability (SI) to thewell-known m/n = 2/1 MHD mode (where m and n are the poloidal and toroidal mode numbers, respectively) in the precursor of DLD, we analyse the evolution of the 2/1 magnetic islandin COMPASS DLD to look for the presence of this SI just close to the onset of energy quenchphase of the disruption. The presence of this SI to the magnetic island was associated with theoccurrence of minor disruptions preceding the major disruption and with the major disruptionitself in [1]. The coherence observed between the perturbations caused by the SI in the magneticpoloidal flux and in the electron temperature was very high (above 0.9), allowing to determinethat the SI perturbations came from the same position as the magnetic island. In the work presented here, only the perturbations in the magnetic poloidal flux are analysed since at the time ofthe experiments in COMPASS, no diagnostics was operational for measuring the time evolutionof the electron temperature with high time rate.Nonlinear MHD numerical simulations have also shown that island deformation during itsrapid growth can lead to the secondary magnetic island formation [2]. A recent review [3] ofthe theory of current sheet formation that leads to magnetic reconnection discusses the role ofplasmoids during magnetic island evolution. Since the validity ranges of the mentioned theoretical works are not directly comparable to the experimental conditions, one cannot claimwith certainty that the SI observed in JET [1] and in COMPASS disruptions (reported here)are the same as observed in those numerical works [2, 3]. However, there are some qualitative43rd EPS Conference on Plasma Physics P5.003similarities between them.The main COMPASS [4] diagnostics used for the analysis in the present work, are the threetoroidally separated arrays (A at 32.5◦, B at 212.5◦and C at 257.5◦from the vessel axis) ofMirnov coils (MCs), each with 24 MCs located poloidally. The MC arrays A and C, toroidallyseparated by 135◦, measure the change in poloidal magnetic flux, dBp/dt. The MC array B,toroidally separated by 180◦to the array A, measures the poloidal magnetic field, Bp. Thesemagnetic sensors have good responsivity to high frequency (up to 1 MHz)

Characterization of toroidal intrinsic rotation with MHD activity in theTCABR tokamak

Plasma rotation has an important play in stabilization of MHD modes and reducing turbulenttransport of particles and energy. Because in fusion reactors it is expected the torque provided byexternal sources will be small, the intrinsic (or spontaneous) rotation is of great interest[1, 2, 3].Furthermore, the origin and physics of plasma rotation is also an important issue by itself.The behavior of the intrinsic toroidal rotation during the growth and saturation of m/n =2/1 magnetic islands, triggered by programmed density ramp up, has been investigated in Lmodeohmic discharges in the TCABR tokamak. In those discharges R = 0.61 m, a = 0.18 m,Ip 80 kA, Bt = 1.07 T, q(a) 3.5 and the toroidal spontaneous rotation of the plasma coreis in the counter-current direction. The results show that the plasma is accelerated as the islandstarts to grow, while the island frequency slows down. And, as the island saturates, the toroidalrotation decreases quite rapidly (faster than the island), and the discharge is followed by a majordisruption. In some discharges, where the density decreases after the island saturation (and thus,avoiding the plasma disruption), the MHD instability becomes smaller until it vanishes, and thetoroidal rotation slows down to its original value before the gas injection

Exponentially growing tearing modes in Rijnhuizen Tokamak Project plasmas

The local measurement of the island width w, around the resonant surface, allowed a direct test of the extended Rutherford model [P. H. Rutherford, PPPL Report-2277 (1985)], describing the evolution of radiation-induced tearing modes prior to disruptions of tokamak plasmas. It is found that this model accounts very well for the observed exponential growth and supports radiation losses as being the main driving mechanism. The model implies that the effective perpendicular electron heat conductivity in the island is smaller than the global one. Comparison of the local measurements of w with the magnetic perturbed field showed that w1/2 was valid for widths up to 18% of the minor radius