The ‘churning mode’ of plasma convection in the tokamak divertor region

Abstract

The churning mode can arise in a toroidally-symmetric plasma where it causes convection in the vicinity of the poloidal magnetic field null. The mode is driven by the toroidal curvature of magnetic field lines coupled with a pressure gradient. The toroidal equilibrium conditions cannot be satisfied easily in the virtual absence of the poloidal field (PF)—hence the onset of this mode, which ‘churns’ the plasma around the PF null without perturbing the strong toroidal field. We find the conditions under which this mode can be excited in magnetic configurations with first-, second-, and third-order PF nulls (i.e., in the geometry of standard, snowflake and cloverleaf divertors). The size of the affected zone in second- and third-order-null divertors is much larger than in a standard first-order-null divertor. The proposed phenomenological theory allows one to evaluate observable characteristics of the mode, in particular the frequency and amplitude of the PF perturbations. The mode spreads the tokamak heat exhaust between multiple divertor legs and may lead to a broadening of the plasma width in each leg. The mode causes much more intense plasma convection in the poloidal plane than the classical plasma drifts.