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The plasma-beta effect on the n = 1 resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) field penetration in purely radio-frequency (RF) wave heated discharges has been investigated in EAST. The experimental results show that the dependence of the threshold RMP coil current for field penetration, I RMP,th , on the total absorbed power P tot scales as approximately I RMP,th ∝ P tot 0.30 , indicating that the error-field tolerance is improved with increasing RF power. This is benefited by the increased electron perpendicular flow dominated by a counter-current electron diamagnetic flow with increasing RF power. However, theoretical scaling in cylindrical geometry overestimates the power index. Assuming an additional term β N α β N for the normalized beta in the scaling, it is shown that the fitted α β N from the experimental observation is around −1, indicating a degradation effect of plasma beta. To clarify the underlying physics of the plasma-beta effect that was not included in the theoretical scaling in cylindrical geometry, the MARS-Q code with full toroidal geometry is employed for simulation of nonlinear field penetration (Liu et al 2013 Phys. Plasmas 20 042503). The MARS-Q simulation results reproduce the β N dependence well, and hence the P tot scaling of the threshold current in experimental observations. The main reason for this is that the net total torque, which is mainly contributed by the neoclassical toroidal viscosity (NTV), increases with increasing plasma β N . The results demonstrate that the nonlinear toroidal coupling effect via NTV torque plays an important role in determining field penetration, even in cases with relatively low β N ∈ [ 0.3 , 0.6 ] , which is far less than the no-wall beta limit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The density scaling of n = 1 error field penetration is investigated under radio-frequency (RF)-dominant heated L-mode discharges in the EAST tokamak. It is found that the density scaling of the threshold field strength for error field penetration in lower-hybrid current drive (LHCD) plasmas is about , where br represents the error field amplitude. The results show a weaker density dependence compared to that observed in the previous ohmic heated discharges (Wang et al 2018 Nucl. Fusion 58 056024). For a better understanding of the density scaling, it is compared with field penetration theories, and it is found that it lies in the Waelbroeck regime. The observed scaling is consistent with that evaluated with the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) theory on error field penetration, for which all the physical parameters are determined experimentally. Due to the density dependence of LHCD heating efficiency, the stronger negative correlation between density and temperature results in a weaker density scaling in these LHCD plasmas. Using realistic parameters under LHCD and ohmic heating as input, respectively, the numerical results based on a reduced MHD model reproduce well the scaling from the error field penetration theory and the observations. Besides, the density scaling in various tokamak operational regimes is also numerically investigated. This provides an excellent validation of MHD theory on error field penetration in the RF-dominant heated L-mode discharges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]