Long-lived impurity-ion snakes in the EAST ELM-free H-mode Sawtoothing plasma

Abstract

Two types of long-lived impurity-ion snakes (LLSs) including the ideal-like kink mode which damps before the large sawtooth crash, termed sawtooth-free LLSs (SF-LLSs) and complex LLSs (C-LLSs), which coexist with compound sawtooth and final damping after sawtooth crash were observed in EAST ELM-free H-mode sawtoothing plasma. These LLSs have an m = 1 structure, accompanied by several harmonic modes (m = 2, m = 3...). There is a slight frequency-chirping behavior of the LLS. Similar with the typical sawtooth crash phase, a large crescent-shaped helical island-like structure in the core region of the C-LLSs was visible after the major crash of the coexisting compound sawtooth. The strong coupling of the C-LLSs and the 2/1 tearing mode (TM) can trigger a neo-classical tearing mode (NTM) due to a forced magnetic reconnection.