Microturbulent drift mode suppression as a trigger mechanism for internal transport barriers on Alcator C-Mod

Abstract

Internal transport barriers (ITBs) can be routinely produced in enhanced Dα (EDA) H-mode discharges on the Alcator C-Mod tokamak by putting the minority ion cyclotron resonance layer at |r/a| ≥ 0.5 during the current flat top phase of the discharge. These ITBs are characterized by density peaking at constant temperature and are therefore both particle and energy transport barriers. The ITB formation appears to result from widening the region near the magnetic axis in which toroidal drift modes are stable, allowing the Ware pinch to peak the density profile. Experimental evidence shows that shifting the ICRF resonance off-axis results in a local flattening of ion and electron temperature profiles. TRANSP calculations of ion temperature profiles support this experimentally observed trend. Stability analysis of ion temperature gradient (ITG) and electron temperature gradient modes at times before ITB formation is done using the linear gyrokinetic code GS2. These gyrokinetic calculations find that the most unstable modes in the C-Mod EDA H-mode core, prior to ITB onset, are the toroidal ITG driven type. These modes are suppressed in the ITB region through a temperature gradient reduction when the ICRF resonance is shifted off-axis.