Magnetics only real-time equilibrium reconstruction on ASDEX Upgrade

Abstract

Real-time reconstruction of the magnetic equilibrium provides fundamental control of plasma shape and position in a tokamak. Details of the implementation of the equilibrium reconstruction code developed for the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak (JANET++) are summarized. Cubic Hermite splines are introduced as current density basis functions for solving the Grad–Shafranov equation. The choice of the optimal Tikhonov regularization parameter is discussed. The code is validated by comparing the results of the equilibrium reconstruction with those of further equilibrium reconstructions available on ASDEX Upgrade (CLISTE and IDE). In a high time resolution study of a discharge with edge localized modes (ELM), the poloidal asymmetry of the fits and magnetic probe measurements suggest that the real-time equilibrium reconstruction captures the essential features of the current density redistribution in an ELMing edge plasma. An efficient algorithm to locate multiple X-points and identify the active one in advanced X-divertor and snowflake divertor configurations is presented.