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Neutral beam injection (NBI) system has been proved to affect sawtooth activities through both producing energetic particles and supplying torque applied to the plasma. The impact of NBI on sawtooth crashes has been studied in the EAST tokamak, which is equipped with co- and counter NBIs. Statistical analysis shows that both strong co- and counter-NBI yield stronger sawtooth activities than cases when heating power is weak. A minimum sawtooth period is observed at a counter-NBI power of 0.2 MW. This is linked to zero-plasma rotation and a non-rotating precursor mode of the sawtooth instability. This indicates that the sawtooth instability is stabilized by plasma rotation as previously suggested. The fast-ion content differs between co- and counter-NBI, so energetic particles might additionally contribute to the sawtooth activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visco-resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations are used to investigate the role of resistivity and viscosity in the reversed field pinch sawtooth crash. Specifically, we examine the temporal behavior of the linearly stable (m, n) = (0, 1) mode. Both volume-averaged dissipation and dissipation levels in the region near the m = 0 resonance are found to influence characteristic time scales. Increasing resistivity causes the mode rise time, fall time, and total crash duration to decrease, while increasing viscosity has the opposite effect. Examination of energy flow during the sawtooth crash reveals that despite the linear stability of the (0, 1) mode, it receives most of its energy from the mean current profile during the crash rather than from nonlinear interactions with other modes. Resistivity and viscosity do not impact mode behavior directly through dissipative energy loss but rather through modification of the large scale current profile evolution and radial structure of the mode. Computational results are compared to experimental data from the Madison Symmetric Torus and found to largely agree when resistivity and viscosity are similar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Control of the tearing mode by sawtooth activity has been achieved in the Joint European Torus tokamak experiments. It has been shown that the tearing mode can be stabilized by short-period sawtooth oscillation. Based on the experimental results, a model for the tearing mode stabilized by sawtooth activity has been proposed, which mainly focuses on the periodic variation of the current during sawtooth activity. Both the current oscillation and the induced electric field which is due to the rapid variation of the current play important roles in the tearing mode stabilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profiles of the W transport coefficients have been experimentally calculated for a large database of identical ASDEX Upgrade H-mode discharges where only the radio-frequency (RF) power characteristics have been varied [Angioni et al., Nucl. Fusion 57, 056015 (2017)]. Central ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) in the minority heating scheme has been compared with central and off-axis electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH), using both localized and broad heat deposition profiles. The transport coefficients have been calculated applying the gradient-flux relation to the evolution of the intrinsic W density in-between sawtooth cycles as measured using the soft X-ray diagnostic. For both ICRH and ECRH, the major player in reducing the central W density peaking is found to be the reduction of inward pinch and in the case of ECRH, the rise of an outward convection. The impurity convection increases, from negative to positive, almost linearly with RF-power, while no appreciable changes are observed in the diffusion coefficient, which remains roughly at neoclassical levels independent of RF power or background plasma conditions. The ratio vW/DW is consistent with the equilibrium ▿ nW=nW prior to the sawtooth crash, corroborating the separate estimates of diffusion and convection. These experimental findings are slightly different from previous results obtained analysing the evolution of impurity injections over many sawtooth cycles. Modelling performed using the drift-kinetic code NEO and the gyro-kinetic code GKW (assuming axisymmetry) overestimates the diffusion coefficient and underestimates the experimental positive convection. This is a further indication that magneto-hydrodynamic/neoclassical models accounting for 3D effects may be needed to characterize impurity transport in sawtoothing tokamak plasmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we consider magnetic reconnection in thin current sheets with both resistive and electron inertia effects. When the current sheet is produced by a primary instability of the internal kink type, the analysis of secondary instabilities indicates that reconnection proceeds on a time scale much shorter than the primary instability characteristic time. In the case of a sawtooth crash, non-collisional physics becomes important above a value of the Lundquist number, which scales like S ~ (R/de)12/5, in terms of the tokamak major radius R and of the electron skin depth de. This value is commonly achieved in present day devices. As collisionality is further reduced, the characteristic rate increases, approaching Alfvéenic values when the primary instability approaches the collisionless regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sawtooth oscillations in tokamaks are defined by their effect on electron temperature: a rapid flattening of the core profile followed by an outward heat pulse and a slow core recovery caused by central heating. Recent high-resolution, multi-chord interferometer measurements on JTEXT extend these studies to particle transport. Sawteeth only partially flatten the core density profile, but enhanced particle diffusion on the time scale of the thermal crash occurs over much of the profile, relevant for impurities. Recovery between crashes implies an inward pinch velocity extending to the center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The optimization of LHD discharges in inward-shifted configurations with 1/3 sawtooth like activity is an open issue. These relaxation events limit the LHD performance driving a periodic plasma deconfinement. The aim of this study is to analyze the 1/3 sawtooth like activity in plasmas with different stability properties to foreseen the best operation conditions and minimize its undesired effects. We summarize the results of several MHD simulations for plasmas with Lundquist numbers between 105 and 106 in the slow reconnection regime, studying the equilibria properties during the onset of a chain of 1/3 sawtooth like events. The research conclusions point out that the hard MHD limit can be reached in the inner plasma region after the onset of a strong 1/3 resonant sawtooth like event and trigger a plasma collapse. The collapse can be avoided if the system remains in the soft MHD limit, namely, in a regime with a pressure gradient and a magnetic turbulence below the critical values to drive the soft-hard MHD transition. In the soft MHD limit the system relaxations are the non resonant 1/3 sawtooth like events or a weak version of the 1/3 resonant sawtooth like events. A system relaxation in the soft MHD regime drives a minor plasma deconfinement that does not limit the LHD performance if the event periodicity is not very high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transport of impurities by a sawtooth crash is simulated with the XTOR-2F code. Impurities are modeled as passive scalars, evolving in the compressible MHD flow inferred from the main MHD plasma. For a peaked impurity density profile, the non-linear kink flow of the sawtooth crash redistributes the profile efficiently and most of the particles in the peak inside the q=1 surface are expelled. For an initially hollow impurity density profile, the crash leads to a significant penetration up to the magnetic axis. The results are compared with Kadomtsev's model. Despite essentially different mechanisms, the evolution of the particle content inside the q=1 surface for Kadomtsev's model and for the non-linear case are virtually identical for the peaked profile, while the model slightly overestimates penetration for the hollow case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]