Control of sawtooth via ECRH on EAST tokamak

Abstract

Localized electron heating produced by electron cyclotron resonant heating (ECRH) system has been proven to be powerful tools for controlling sawtooth instabilities, because such system allows to directly modify the local plasma parameters that determine the evolution of sawtooth periods. In this paper, we present the experimental results carried out on experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST) with regard to sawtooth period control via ECRH. The electron cyclotron heating system on EAST was capable of inject electron cyclotron wave toward certain locations inside or outside q = 1 magnetic surface on the poloidal cross section, which renders us able to investigate the evolution of sawtooth period against the ECRH deposition position. It is found that when ECRH deposition position is inside the q = 1 surface, the sawtooth oscillation is destabilized (characterized by reduced sawtooth period). So far, inside the q = 1 surface, there are not enough EAST experiment data that can reveal more detailed information about the relation between ECRH deposition position and sawtooth period. When ECRH deposition is outside the q = 1 surface, the sawtooth oscillation is stabilized (characterized by prolonged sawtooth period), and the sawtooth periods gradually decrease as ECRH deposition position sweeps away from q = 1 surface. The sawtooth periods reach maximum when ECRH deposition position falls around q = 1 surface. The magnetic shear at q = 1 surface is calculated to offer insights for the temporal evolution of sawtooth. The result has been found consistent with the Porcelli model.