An investigation of coupling of the internal kink mode to error field correction coils in tokamaks

Abstract

The coupling of the internal kink to an external m/n = 1/1 perturbation is studied for profiles that are known to result in a saturated internal kink in the limit of a cylindrical tokamak. It is found from three-dimensional equilibrium calculations that, for A ≈ 30 circular plasmas and A ≈ 3 elliptical shapes, this coupling of the boundary perturbation to the internal kink is strong; i.e., the amplitude of the m/n = 1/1 structure at q = 1 is large compared with the amplitude applied at the plasma boundary. Evidence suggests that this saturated internal kink, resulting from small field errors, is an explanation for the TEXTOR and JET measurements of q0 remaining well below unity throughout the sawtooth cycle, as well as the distinction between sawtooth effects on the q-profile observed in TEXTOR and DIII-D. It is proposed that this excitation, which could readily be applied with error field correction coils, be explored as a mechanism for controlling sawtooth amplitudes in high-performance tokamak discharges. This result is then combined with other recent tokamak results to propose an L-mode approach to fusion in tokamaks.