Roles of Electric Field Shear and Shafranov Shift in Sustaining High Confinement in Enhanced Reversed Shear Plasmas on the TFTR Tokamak

Abstract

The relaxation of core transport barriers in TFTR enhanced reversed shear plasmas has been studied by varying the radial electric field using different applied torques from neutral beam injection. Transport rates and fluctuations remain low over a wide range of radial electric field shear, but increase when the local $\mathbf{E}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\mathbf{B}$ shearing rates are driven below a threshold comparable to the fastest linear growth rates of the dominant instabilities. Shafranov-shift-induced stabilization alone is not able to sustain enhanced confinement.