Spontaneous poloidal spin-up of tokamaks and the transition to the<i>H</i>mode

Abstract

The radial transport of toroidal angular momentum and circulation in a tokamak resulting from diffusion that is poloidally asymmetric is shown to produce an instability of the poloidal rotation. This instability, due to Stringer, sets in where the local particle-confinement time is smaller than the damping time of poloidal flow and leads to poloidal velocity shar. The nonlinear interplay between the poloidal spin-up and turulence-driven anoamlous transport is shown to lead to bifurcated equilibria of the type observed in the L-to-H-mode transition in tokamaks.