A1fven Eigenmodes in Spherical Tokamaks

Abstract

Electromagnetic instabilities are often excited by fast super-Alfvenic ions produced by neutral beam injection (NBI) in plasmas of the spherical tokamaks START and MAST (toroidal magnetic confinement devices in which the minor a and major R0 radii of the torus are comparable, R0/a = 1.2÷1.8). These instabilities are seen as discrete weakly-damped toroidal and elliptical Alfven eigenmodes (TAEs and EAEs) with frequencies tracing in time the Alfven scaling with the equilibrium magnetic field and plasma density, or as energetic particle modes (EPMs) whose frequencies don't start from TAE-frequency and sweep down in time faster than the equilibrium parameters change. In some discharges the beam drives Alfvenic-type modes that start from the TAE frequency and sweep in both up- and down- directions. Such electromagnetic perturbations are interpreted as `hole-clump' long-living nonlinear fluctuations of the fast ion distribution function predicted by Berk-Breizman-Petviashvili [Phys. Lett. A238 (1998) 408]. It is found on both START and MAST that the Alfven instabilities weaken in their mode amplitude and in the number of unstable modes as the pressure of the thermal plasma increases, in agreement with increased thermal ion Landau damping and the pressure effect on core-localised TAEs.