Related papers: Explosive eruption cycles in a rotating Z-pinch
Plasma equilibria reconstructed from the Mega-Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) have sufficient resolution to capture plasma evolution during the short period between edge-localized modes (ELMs). Immediately after the ELM steep gradients in…
Motivated by explosive releases of energy in fusion, space and astrophysical plasmas, we consider the nonlinear stability of stratified magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibria against two-dimensional interchanges of straight magnetic-flux…
The spontaneous pedestal formation above a power threshold at the edge of magnetically confined plasma is modelled for the first time in flux driven three-dimensional fluid simulations of electromagnetic turbulence with the code EMEDGE3D.…
The pedestal profile measurements in high triangularity JET plasmas show that with low fuelling the pedestal width decreases during the ELM cycle and with high fuelling it stays constant. In the low fuelling case the pedestal pressure…
Recently, theoretical analysis has identified plasma microinstabilities as the primary mechanism responsible for anomalous heat transport in tokamaks. In particular, the microtearing mode (MTM) has been credited with the production of…
Toroidal rotation is well known to play significant roles in the edge transport and L-H transition dynamics of tokamaks. Our recent calculation finds that a sufficiently strong localized toroidal rotation can directly bring out the…
H-mode operation of tokamak fusion plasmas free of dangerous Type 1 edge-localized-modes (ELMs) requires a non-ELM mechanism for saturating the edge pedestal growth. One possible mechanism is turbulent transport. We introduce a transport…
This paper studies the nonlinear evolution of magnetic field turbulence in proximity of steady ideal MHD configurations characterized by a small electric current, a small plasma flow, and approximate flux surfaces, a physical setting that…
The effect of a narrow sub-Alfvenic shear flow layer near the minimum q_min of the tokamak safety factor profile in a configuration with reversed central shear is analyzed. Sufficiently strong velocity shear gives rise to a broad spectrum…
Tokamak stability to, potentially explosive, `ballooning' displacements of elliptical magnetic flux tubes is examined in large aspect ratio equilibrium. Above a critical pressure gradient the energy stored in the plasma may be lowered by…
The rapid deposition of energy by Edge Localised Modes (ELMs) onto plasma facing components, is a potentially serious issue for large Tokamaks such as ITER and DEMO. The trigger for ELMs is believed to be the ideal Magnetohydrodynamic…
The z-pinch is a classical steady state for the MHD model, where a confined plasma fluid is separated by vacuum, in the presence of a magnetic field which is generated by a prescribed current along the z direction. We develop a variational…
Analytic solutions of the magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium equations for a cylindrically symmetric magnetically confined plasma with reversed magnetic shear, s < 0, and sheared flow are constructed by prescribing the safety factor-, poloidal…
Periodic edge localized modes (ELMs) are the non-linear consequences of pressure-gradient-driven ballooning modes and current-driven peeling modes becoming unstable in the pedestal region of high confinement fusion plasmas. In future…
Toroidal flow alone is generally thought to have important influence on tokamak edge pedestal stability, even though theory analysis often predicts merely a weak stabilizing effect of toroidal flow on the edge localized modes (ELMs) in…
Recent advances in the integrated modeling of ELMy H-mode plasmas are presented. A model for the H-mode pedestal and for the triggering of ELMs predicts the height, width, and shape of the H-mode pedestal and the frequency and width of…
The z-pinch is a classical steady state for the MHD model, where a confined plasma fluid is separated by vacuum, in the presence of a magnetic field which is generated by a prescribed current along the $z$ direction. We develop a scaled…
Multi-machine empirical scaling predicts an extremely narrow heat exhaust layer in future high magnetic field tokamaks, producing high power densities that require mitigation. In the experiments presented, the width of this exhaust layer is…
A general formulation of the problem of calculating the spectrum of stable and unstable eigenmodes of linearized perturbations about a magnetically confined toroidal plasma is presented. The analysis is based on a new hydromagnetic…
The flow of an electrically conducting fluid driven by a traveling magnetic field imposed at the endcaps of a cylindrical annulus is numerically studied. At sufficiently large magnetic Reynolds number, the system undergoes a transition from…