English

Density Limit Experiments and Core-localized Kinetic MHD Activities in HL-2A Ohmic Heating Plasmas

Plasma Physics 2026-01-23 v1

Abstract

The density limit is a mysterious barrier to magnetic confinement nuclear fusion, and is still an unresolved issue. In this paper, we will present the experimental results of the density limit and core-localized kinetic MHD instabilities on HL-2A. Firstly, the high density shots with ne/neG>1ne/ne_G>1 have been achieved by the conventional gas-puff fuelling method in Ohmic heating plasmas, and the corresponding duration time is close to t500t\sim500 ms (\sim 30τE30\tau_E), where τE\tau_E is the global energy confinement time. Secondly, it is found for the first time that there are kinetic MHD instabilities in the core plasmas while ne/neG1ne/ne_G\sim1. The analysis suggests that the core-localized MHD activities belong to Alfv{\'e}nic ion temperature gradient (AITG) modes or kinetic ballooning modes (KBM), and firstly it is found on experiment that they trigger the minor or major disruption of bulk plasmas while the density profile is peaked. These new findings are of great importance to figure out and understand the origin of the density limit.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.15590,
  title  = {Density Limit Experiments and Core-localized Kinetic MHD Activities in HL-2A Ohmic Heating Plasmas},
  author = {L. W. Hu and W. Chen and P. W. Shi and T. Long and J. Q. Xu and R. R. Ma and Y. G. Li and L. M. Yu and X. Yu and M. Jiang and T. F. Sun and J. M. Gao and Y. B. Dong and X. L. Zhu and Z. B. Shi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.15590},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

15 pages, 13 figures