Observation of particle transport barriers in reverse shear plasmas on the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor

Abstract

Perturbative experiments on the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor [Phys. Plasmas 4, 1736 (1997)] (TFTR) have investigated transport in reverse shear plasmas. On TFTR, reverse magnetic shear plasmas bifurcate into two states with different transport properties: reverse shear (RS) and enhanced reverse shear (ERS) with improved core confinement. Measurements of the 14 MeV t(d,n)α neutrons and charge-exchange recombination radiation spectra are used to infer the trace tritium and helium profiles, respectively. The profile evolution indicate the formation of core particle transport barriers in ERS plasmas. The transport barrier is manifested by an order-of-magnitude reduction in the particle diffusivity (DT,DHe) and a smaller reduction in the pinch within the reverse shear region. The low diffusivities are consistent with neoclassical predictions. Furthermore, DT and DHe≈χeff, the effective thermal diffusivity. Although the measured coefficients imply no helium ash accumulation, the situation is uncertain in a reactor due to unknown χeff scaling.