Improved confinement in TEXTOR

Abstract

A new regime of enhanced confinement (I-mode) is found in plasmas with circular cross-sections in the pump limiter tokamak TEXTOR with boronized walls. This regime is obtained with three types of auxiliary heating, namely NBI co-injection, NBI counter-injection+ICRH and NBI co-injection+NBI counter-injection, and has many similarities with the H-mode regime obtained in divertor tokamaks. The energy confinement times obtained in these discharges scale as favourably as those in stationary H-mode discharges with edge localized modes. A detailed analysis of the scaling of the confinement time with plasma current, heating power and plasma density is presented. Characteristic electron density and temperature profiles are observed, with large central values and well developed edge pedestals. They are compared with those found in H-mode discharges and supershots. A poloidal beta limit of 1.6 is found in the I-mode discharges of TEXTOR. The maximum toroidal beta values obtained reach nearly 1%, i.e. 0.7 times the Troyon limit in TEXTOR. I-mode confinement is always linked with low recycling and absence of MHD activity. If these conditions are not met. L-mode scaling is retrieved. MHD activity, which is more likely to occur at low plasma densities and currents, can cause a sudden drop to L-mode scaling. So far, no transition from the L-mode scaling to the I-mode scaling has been observed