Destabilization of beta-induced Alfvén eigenmodes in the HL-2A tokamak

Abstract

Beta-induced Alfvén eigenmode (BAE) during a strong tearing mode activity (termed as m-BAE) has been observed and investigated in HL-2A. BAE excited by energetic electrons (termed as e-BAE) has been identified both in the Ohmic and ECRH plasma. The hard x-ray spectrum detected by cadmium telluride and the non-thermal radiation measured by electron cyclotron emission are used to analyse the behaviour of the energetic electrons. Experimental results show that the e-BAE is related not only to the populations of the energetic electrons, but also their energy distribution. An interesting result about the BAEs modulated by a supersonic molecular beam and gas puffing is presented. In addition, BAEs during a sawtooth cycle are described in this paper. To assess the identification of the e-BAE and m-BAE, the generalized fishbone-like dispersion relation and magnetic-island-induced BAE dispersion relation are solved near marginal stability, respectively. Compared with experimental results, the calculation analysis shows that the observed frequencies are all close to the theoretical results.