Correlations of heat and momentum transport in the TFTR tokamak

Abstract

Measurements of the toroidal rotation speed vφ(r) driven by neutral beam injection in tokamak plasmas and, in particular, simultaneous profile measurements of vφ, Ti, Te, and ne, have provided new insights into the nature of anomalous transport in tokamaks. Low-recycling plasmas heated with unidirectional neutral beam injection exhibit a strong correlation among the local diffusivities, χφ≊χi>χe. Recent measurements have confirmed similar behavior in broad-density L-mode plasmas. These results are consistent with the conjecture that electrostatic turbulence is the dominant transport mechanism in the tokamak fusion test reactor tokamak (TFTR) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 1004 (1987)], and are inconsistent with predictions both from test-particle models of strong magnetic turbulence and from ripple transport. Toroidal rotation speed measurements in peaked-density TFTR ‘‘supershots’’ with partially unbalanced beam injection indicate that momentum transport decreases as the density profile becomes more peaked. In high-temperature, peaked-density plasmas the observed gradient scale length parameter ηtoti=d ln Ti/d ln ne correlates reasonably well with predictions of the threshold for exciting ion-temperature-gradient-driven turbulence (ITGDT), as would be expected for plasmas at marginal stability with respect to this strong transport mechanism. In L-mode plasmas where ITGDT is expected to be too weak to enforce marginal stability, ηtoti exceeds this threshold considerably. However, preliminary experiments have failed to observe a significant increase in ion heat transport when ηtoti was rapidly forced above ηc (the threshold for exciting ITGDT) using a perturbative particle source, as would have been expected for a plasma at marginal stability.