MHD activity and formation of the electron internal transport barrier in the T-10 tokamak

Abstract

The plasma stability and confinement have been investigated through control of the safety factor profile q(r) by the electron cyclotron current drive in the T-10 tokamak. The regimes with dq/dr≅0 and dq/dr<0 in the plasma core were obtained. Various types of MHD activity were observed: ordinary sawtooth, saturated sawtooth, humpbacks, hills etc. It was shown that when the minimal value qmin increases from qmin <1 to qmin = 2 the plasma becomes strongly unstable due to the corresponding MHD activity or passes to the steady-state improved confinement mode. The latter is realized when the electron internal transport barrier (EITB) is formed. The condition for the appearance of the EITB is dq/dr≅0, where q = m/n lies near a rational value for low m and n.