Recent progress in reversed field pinch research in the RFX experiment

Abstract

The article presents an overview of recent experimental results obtained on the RFX device. The authors obtained and studied a reversed field pinch plasma with a plasma current of up to 1 MA, negligible radiation losses and low effective charge. The local power and particle balance shows that in standard operation the plasma core is dominated by magnetic turbulence and that the global confinement is mainly provided by the edge region, where a strongly sheared radial electric field is present. With poloidal current drive the amplitude of magnetic fluctuations and the thermal conductivity of the plasma core are reduced, leading to improved confinement. Reduced heat transport is also observed when the width of the n spectrum of magnetic fluctuations is reduced.