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(EXP3/14) Mode Dynamics and Confinement in the Reversed Field Pinch

P. R. Brunsell¹⁾, H. Bergsaker¹⁾, J. H. Brzozowski¹⁾, M. Cecconello¹⁾, J. R. Drake¹⁾, J.-A. Malmberg¹⁾, J. Scheffel¹⁾, D. D. Schnack^2)
 
1) Alfvén Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
²⁾ Science Application International Corp., CA, USA

Abstract.  Tearing mode dynamics and toroidal plasma flow in the RFP has been experimentally studied in the Extrap T2 device. A toroidally localised, stationary magnetic field perturbation, the ``slinky mode'' is formed in nearly all discharges. There is a tendency of increased phase alignment of different toroidal Fourier modes, resulting in higher localised mode amplitudes, with higher magnetic fluctuation level. The fluctuation level increases slightly with increasing plasma current and plasma density. The toroidal plasma flow velocity and the ion temperature has been measured with Doppler spectroscopy. Both the toroidal plasma velocity and the ion temperature clearly increase with I/N. Initial, preliminary experimental results obtained very recently after a complete change of the Extrap T2 front-end system (first wall, shell, TF coil), show that an operational window with mode rotation most likely exists in the rebuilt device, in contrast to the earlier case discussed above. A numerical code DEBSP has been developed to simulate the behaviour of RFP confinement in realistic geometry, including essential transport physics. Resulting scaling laws are presented and compared with results from Extrap T2 and other RFP experiments.

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