H-mode Discharges Research Articles

Validation of gyrokinetic simulations in NSTX and projections for high-k turbulence measurements in NSTX-U

An extensive validation effort performed for a modest-beta NSTX NBI-heated H-mode discharge predicts that electron thermal transport can be entirely explained by electron-scale turbulence fluctuations driven by the electron temperature gradient mode (ETG), both in conditions of strong and weak ETG turbulence drive. Thermal power-balance estimates computed by TRANSP as well as the shape of the high-k density fluctuation wavenumber spectrum and the fluctuation level ratio between strongly driven and weakly driven ETG-turbulence conditions can be matched by nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations and a synthetic diagnostic for high-k scattering. Linear gyrokinetic simulations suggest that the ion-scale instability in the weak ETG condition is close to the critical threshold for the kinetic ballooning mode instability, and nonlinear ion-scale gyrokinetic simulations show that turbulence might be in a state reminiscent of a Dimits' shift regime, opening speculation on the role that ion-scale turbulence might play for the weak ETG condition. A simulation that matched all experimental constraints is chosen to project high-k turbulence spectra in NSTX-U, revealing that the new high-k system [R. Barchfeld et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 89, 10C114 (2018)] should be sensitive to density fluctuations from radially elongated streamer structures. Two schemes are designed to characterize the radial and poloidal wavenumber dependence of the density fluctuation wavenumber power spectrum around the streamer peak, suggesting future high-k fluctuation measurements could be sensitive to an asymmetry in the kr spectrum introduced due to the presence of strong background flow shear.

Robust control of q-profile and βp using data-driven models on EAST

• A novel H ∞ robust control scheme is developed for the current profile control using data-driven models. • A decoupling technique enables the control scheme to exhibit multi-functional characteristics. • An anti-windup technique can compensate the effects from moderate time-delays and actuator dynamics. • An efficient procedure is provided to support the H-mode steady-state operation on EAST. • Three general performance indexes are proposed to characterize the current profile control performance. A new robust feedback controller for the safety factor profile and poloidal plasma pressure parameter has been developed using a two-time-scale data-driven model. The model describes the linear plasma responses of the ι profile and β p with respect to auxiliary heating & current drive (H&CD) powers, around a typical plasma equilibrium in an H-mode steady-state plasma discharge on EAST. The feedback controller comprises a carefully designed low-pass filter for the timescale separation, a decoupling module and three local controllers synthesized from the H ∞ norm optimization and the singular value decomposition. The actuators are the lower hybrid current drive (LHCD) system at 4.6 GHz and the ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) system at 33 MHz. Taking into account the actuation dynamics, an anti-windup technique is employed to condition the controller online aiming to attenuate the negative effects from moderate time delays and power saturations. Extensive nonlinear closed-loop simulations with the METIS code suggest that high β p and negative central magnetic shear that characterize advanced tokamak plasma scenarios can be achieved and sustained on EAST with good tracking performance and reasonable robustness via the proposed control scheme. The feedback control of the core ι profile and β p with a range of time delays, power saturations and varying weighting functions are evaluated numerically, compared and discussed. The control robustness to plasma parameter uncertainties including the line-averaged plasma density 〈 n ¯ e 〉 , the H-mode enhancement factor H factor and the effective charge number Z eff are assessed and analyzed.

Lithium splashing from flowing liquid lithium limiter and its effect on high confinement plasma performance in EAST tokamak

Abstract To study the potential applications of liquid lithium (Li) as plasma facing material, the third generation of flowing liquid Li (FLiLi) limiter has been designed and successfully tested in EAST tokamak H-mode discharges in the 2018 run campaign. The stability of liquid Li on FLiLi surface, and Li splashing and its effect on the plasma performance are investigated in detail. Li splashing was observed in L-mode and H-mode discharges due to Rayleigh-Taylor (R-T) instability, resulting from electromagnetic forces J → × B → . Li splashing in low-parameter plasma decreased both core and edge electron temperatures, resulting in the degradation of plasma energy confinement and even H-L back transition, however, it almost did not influence plasma confinement performance in high-parameter plasma. These findings indicate that high-parameter plasma has higher tolerance to Li impurities than low-parameter plasma. By contrast, tungsten splashing from the melted layer on the upper divertor was also induced by the R-T instability but generally resulted in plasma disruption, which suggests lower tolerance to tungsten impurities in EAST tokamak.

Influence of CX-reactions on the radiation in the pedestal region at ASDEX Upgrade

The radial density profiles of Ne10 + and Ne8 + have been measured with charge exchange recombination spectroscopy in an H-mode discharge in ASDEX Upgrade. When trying to fit the data with an impurity transport code that only takes electronic ionisation and recombination into account, the density of Ne8 + is too low by more than an order of magnitude indicating that an additional recombination mechanism must be at work. We ascribe the missing recombination channel to charge exchange (CX) reactions between neutral deuterium and the impurity ions, which has long been known to be a very efficient recombination reaction. Including the CX-reactions yields a good fit of the ionisation balance and delivers the neutral density profile in the pedestal, which is not known from other diagnostics. Here, the CX-reactions lead to a change of the ionisation balance on the whole flux surface and the measurement delivers a flux surface averaged neutral density with the exception of the region very close to the X-point. Furthermore, it leads to an increase of the pedestal radiation of neon since the partially ionised stages can emit line radiation. This amounts to an increase of the radiated power of neon inside of the separatrix by a factor of 5. A similar analysis was done for argon in an H-mode discharge dominated by Ar radiation. Only the CX-recombination in the pedestal can explain the radiated power inside the separatrix, which would be too low by a factor of 2.2 without CX. In addition, the radiances of VUV lines from many charge stages are much better fitted when including the CX-recombination. A simple projection of the impact of CX-recombination to the much hotter ITER pedestals shows that for elements up to Kr, a beneficial increase of edge radiated power per core radiated power and of radiated power per central dilution is obtained, while for Xe and especially for W the effect is weak.

Experimental observation and simulation analysis of the relationship between the fishbone and ITB formation on EAST tokamak

A strong relationship between the fishbone instability and internal transport barrier (ITB) formation has been found on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in high βN ELMy H-mode discharges. ITB formation always appears after the fishbone instability, and the fishbone disappears when the ITB grows to a certain extent. Hybrid simulations with the global kinetic-magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) code M3D-K have been carried out to investigate the linear stability and non-linear dynamics of beam-driven fishbone instabilities in these shots. The simulation results show that the fishbone instability absorbs the energy of the fast ions and changes the distribution function of the fast ions, leading to the accumulation of fast ions near the ITB, which might eventually assist in the formation of the ITB. The q = 1 surface disappearance caused by the bootstrap current generated by the steep pressure gradient in the ITB region has been considered as the reason for the fishbone instability vanishing. This process has also been reproduced in simulation. However, the timescale of this change in the q profile is not sufficient under classical current diffusion times. The simulation utilizes another assumption explaining the disappearance of the fishbone instability. The density will form a barrier in the ITB region, which should broaden the distribution of the fast ions, and the broadening profile of the distribution of the fast ion mitigates the growth of the fishbone instability.

ELM Suppression by Boron Powder Injection and Comparison with Lithium Powder Injection on EAST

Type I edge-localized modes (ELMs) in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) were completely suppressed via boron powder injection into the X-point region of an upper-single null configuration over a wide range of operating conditions (2.8 < Paux < 7.5 MW, 3.8 × 1019 < ne < 6 × 1019 m−3, RF-only and RF + NBI heating scenarios, both grad-B drift directions, and even He ion majority plasmas) (Sun et al. in Nucl. Fusion, 2020). A window of edge B concentration for stable long pulse operation was identified: too low and ELMs return, too high and the discharge suffers radiative collapse. The injection of boron powder above the minimum for ELM suppression coincided with the occurrence of an edge harmonic oscillation detected in magnetics (both on the high-field side and low-field side), in AXUV diodes near the upper X-point, divertor D $${\upalpha }$$ emission, and in a range of other diagnostics (Diallo et al. in: Proceedings of 2020 IAEA fusion energy conference, 2021). No harmonic oscillation was observed when ELMs were present, and stored energy was slightly increased at constant density during ELM suppression. Core tungsten emission during ELM suppression either increased or decreased relative to ELMy H-mode, but the W emission was maintained at acceptable levels. The threshold B injection rate was measured for several conditions, and found to increase with heating power. Li powder injection into comparable discharges also resulted in a short phase of ELM suppression, but density and stored energy both decreased due to the strong pumping effect of lithium; no edge harmonic oscillation was observed with Li injection, indicating that the ELM suppression mechanisms differ. The new set of B-seeded, ELM-suppressed discharges exhibited certain characteristics of quiescent H-mode (Burrell et al. in Phys Plasmas 8:2153, 2001), but did not require high shear, counter beams, etc. The wide operating window and compatibility with RF-only discharges paves the way for future experiments targeting long pulse H-mode discharges with complete ELM suppression.

Role of electric currents for the SOL and divertor target heat fluxes in ASDEX Upgrade

In divertor tokamaks electric currents flowing in the Scrape-Off Layer (SOL) are a frequently observed and well known feature. However, the convective heat flux carried by these currents is often assumed to be small compared to the total parallel heat flux. In this paper it is shown that in ASDEX Upgrade the electric current, which was measured by Langmuir probes at the outer target, can be several times larger than the ion saturation current in low density L- and H-mode discharges. Therefore they have to be taken into account when calculating the target heat flux from the Langmuir probe data. Moreover, a detailed analysis reveals that for low density L- and H-mode discharges the heat flux profile is mainly determined by the current profile. By applying a 1D heat flux transport model it is demonstrated that the electric current can carry a large fraction (> 50 %) of the electron heat flux along the SOL convectively. Thus a Spitzer-Härm approach, where it is assumed that heat is transported only conductively, might not be valid in the investigated regime.

Impurity transport in the pedestal of H-mode plasmas with resonant magnetic perturbations

Experiments on DIII-D show that resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) reduce the impurity confinement time in the H-mode pedestal below that of naturally ELMy plasmas. STRAHL modeling of discharges with aluminum laser blow off (LBO) injection show increased diffusion in the pedestal of H-mode discharges with RMPs. The increased diffusion from the RMPs provides improved impurity control compared to the naturally ELMy discharges and prevents the buildup of impurities near the edge of the plasma. Tungsten LBO injection into discharges with and without RMPs led to striking differences in the evolution of the discharge. The naturally ELMy discharge became ELM free and showed an increase in edge radiation, leading to the eventual radiative collapse of the plasma. Injecting a similar number of W particles into discharges with RMPs, either with or without ELMs, led to a measurable accumulation of core W but did not significantly impact the evolution of the discharge. These results indicate that RMPs are beneficial for controlling the buildup of impurities in the pedestal region of the plasma.

Dependence of the impurity transport on the dominant turbulent regime in ELM-y H-mode discharges on the DIII-D tokamak

Laser blow-off injections of aluminum and tungsten have been performed on the DIII-D tokamak to investigate the variation of impurity transport in a set of dedicated ion and electron heating scans with a fixed value of the external torque. The particle transport is quantified via the Bayesian inference method, which, constrained by a combination of a charge exchange recombination spectroscopy, soft x-ray measurements, and vacuum ultraviolet spectroscopy provides a detailed uncertainty quantification of transport coefficients. Contrasting discharge phases with a dominant electron and ion heating reveal a threefold drop in the impurity confinement time and order of magnitude increase in midradius impurity diffusion, when additional electron heating is applied. Furthermore, the calculated stationary aluminum density profiles reverse from peaked in electron heated to hollow in the ion heated case, following a similar trend to electron and carbon density. Comparable values of a core diffusion have been observed for W and Al ions, while differences in the propagation dynamics of these impurities are attributed to pedestal and edge transport. Modeling of the core transport with non-linear gyrokinetics code CGYRO [J. Candy and E. Belly, J. Comput. Phys. 324, 73 (2016)], significantly underpredicts the magnitude of the variation in Al transport. Diffusion increases three-times steeper with additional electron heat flux, and 10-times lower diffusion is observed in ion heated case than predicted by the modeling. The CGYRO model quantitatively matches the increase in the Al diffusion when approaching the linear threshold for the transition from the ion temperature gradient to trapped electron mode.

Effect of lithium coating on long pulse high performance plasma discharges in EAST

Control of impurities, fuel recycling and hydrogen content by lithium evaporative coatings and real-time lithium powder injection (LPI) in EAST are studied for high performance H-mode discharges of up to ∼100 s. The results show that the lithium evaporative coatings significantly reduced both the low-Z impurity carbon and high-Z impurity tungsten as well as molybdenum concentration in the plasmas, and the impurities concentration significantly reduced with the accumulated lithium coatings and maintained well afterwards. Specifically the high-Z tungsten core impurity concentration was maintained between 3 ppm–15 ppm during the 101 s H-mode discharge, which is acceptable for the long pulse operation. In addition, real-time wall conditioning via LPI successfully reduced the core high-Z metal impurities by 50% during ∼35 s long pulse H-mode discharge, exhibiting strong compatibility between real-time LPI with long pulse discharges. In addition, evaporative lithium coatings demonstrated fuel recycling control, with fuel recycling obviously reducing with lithium coatings and maintaining well afterwards. Also, the lithium evaporative coatings reduced the hydrogen minority species content, represented by the density ratio H/(H + D), from ∼50% down to ∼5% with accumulated lithium coatings; low hydrogen fraction improved the ICRF minority heating efficiency. Finally the real-time LPI reduced the recycling coefficient Rglobal from 0.95 to 0.82. With these wall conditionings help, the plasma density controlled well during the 101 s long pulse H-mode discharge. These results provide valuable references on impurities, fuel recycling and hydrogen content control for future longer pulse high performance H-mode operation (≥400 s) in EAST and future fusion devices.

An improved theory of the response of DIII-D H-mode discharges to static resonant magnetic perturbations and its implications for the suppression of edge localized modes

The plasma response to an externally generated, static, n = 2, resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) in the pedestal region of DIII-D H-mode discharge #158115 is investigated using a toroidal generalization of the asymptotic matching model presented by Fitzpatrick [Phys. Plasmas 27, 042506 (2020)]. Just as in a recent paper [Q. M. Hu et al., Phys. Plasmas 26, 120702 (2019)], it is hypothesized that the density pump-out phenomenon is due to locked magnetic island chains induced at the bottom of the pedestal, whereas the suppression of edge localized modes is associated with a locked magnetic island chain induced at the top of the pedestal. Neutral penetration inside the last closed magnetic flux-surface is found to have a significant influence on locked magnetic island chain formation at the bottom of the pedestal. It is found that locked island formation at the top of the pedestal is only possible when q95 lies in certain narrow windows. Finally, it is inferred that, in order to successfully induce a locked island chain at the top of the pedestal, an external RMP field-coil system must generate a magnetic field that is simultaneously strongly amplified by the plasma (via the ideal kink response) and has a large resonant component at a rational surface that lies close to the top of the pedestal.

Use of virtual actuators in ASDEX Upgrade control

Abstract Actuator management is an essential part of a modern tokamak plasma control system. It has to deal with a large number of control task simultaneously, needs to be able to operate close to stability limits and to avoid disruptions. In the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak experiment, the process of actuator management development is ongoing. As a first step, we have removed direct assignement of physical actuators to controllers responsible for the control task execution. Instead, the controller is communicating to the so-called virtual actuator, which groups an arbitrary number of actuators of the same type (so far ECRH only) and distributes the controller command between them. The virtual actuator has been implemented and used on ASDEX Upgrade in the 2019 experimental campaign. It gave valuable contributions to several physics experiments. First, the implementation of the virtual actuator enabled β p control by ECRH power, which is of interest especially for I-mode and ELM-free H-mode discharges. Second, it was used in the electron temperature control experiments, which is a useful control tool for transport studies. Third, the concept was used for the density limit disruption avoidance experiments where central ECRH power is applied to recover the plasma from a disruptive zone. The current paper describes the use of the virtual actuator in these cases and based on the gained experience, it suggests future developments and improvements of the virtual actuator on ASDEX Upgrade discharge control system.

Quantitative comparisons of electron-scale turbulence measurements in NSTX via synthetic diagnostics for high-k scattering

Two synthetic diagnostics are implemented for the high-k scattering system in NSTX (Smith et al 2008 Rev. Sci. Instrum. 79 123501) allowing direct comparisons between the synthetic and experimentally detected frequency and wavenumber spectra of electron-scale turbulence fluctuations. Synthetic diagnostics are formulated in real-space and in wavenumber space, and are deployed in realistic electron-scale simulations carried out with the GYRO code (Candy and Waltz 2003 J. Comput. Phys. 186 545). A highly unstable electron temperature gradient (ETG) mode regime in a modest-β NSTX NBI-heated H-mode discharge is chosen for the analysis. Mapping the measured wavenumbers to field aligned coordinates shows that the high-k system is sensitive to fluctuations that are closer to the spectral peak in the density fluctuation wavenumber spectrum (streamers) than originally predicted. The analyses of synthetic spectra show that the frequency response of the detected fluctuations is dominated by Doppler shift and is insensitive to the turbulence drive. The shape of the high-k density fluctuation wavenumber spectrum is sensitive to the ETG turbulence drive conditions, and can be reproduced in a sensitivity scan of the most pertinent turbulent drive terms in the simulation.

Turbulence driven widening of the near-SOL power width in ASDEX Upgrade H-Mode discharges

Divertor heat flux data from infra red (IR) from various tokamaks in H-Mode regime show that the power width, , scales approximately like 1.6 (R/a) ρs,pol. However, the IR based scaling comes with the restriction that only discharges were considered with attached divertor conditions. Here we set up a new data base covering low edge density data but also including high density plasmas reaching the H-mode density limit. We use Thomson-scattering to measure the electron temperature decay length which will set the near-SOL power width through parallel heat conduction. We present scaling results for the density, temperature and pressure separatrix fall-off lengths. As the principal result we derive a generalized power width scaling which reads as where describes a normalized collisionality (). The parameter describes the relative importance of the interchange effect on drift-wave turbulence as proposed by Scott and is found to be closely linked to the diamagnetic parameter αd introduced by Rogers, Drake and Zeiler (RDZ). The edge operational space for ASDEX Upgrade displays a boundary qualitatively in agreement with the region labelled as density limit in the edge plasma phase space proposed by RDZ. The data base shows in the limit of low edge densities () accurate agreement to the IR based power width scaling. At elevated separatrix densities () the power width is broadened by a factor of up to about three accompanied by a reduction of the H98,y2 confinement factor. Plasmas with higher triangularity show higher values for H98,y2 in the same range of normalized collisionality.

Study on Effect of Inductively Coupled Ar/O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; Plasma in E- and H-Mode on Riceberry Rice by SEM/EDS

Riceberry brown rice is regarded as a source of various nutrients; often richer than white rice. Non-thermal plasma has recently been gaining a role for improving properties of cereal grains, especially brown rice. A number of methods of plasma treatment has been proposed including discharges as capacitive coupled plasma (CCP) and inductive coupled plasma (ICP). ICP has two operation modes as capacitive (E-mode) and inductive (H-mode) discharge with rather distinct characters. In this study we have focused on using ICP Ar/O2 plasma in both E-and H mode for plasma treatment on riceberry brown rice. The input power for plasma generation were set to 50 and 250 W for E-and H-mode, respectively. Plasma in H-mode was having higher plasma density than that in E-mode, as observed in the optical emission spectrum. The surface morphology of riceberry brown rice before and after Ar/O2 plasma treatment was evaluated using a scanning electron microscope without or with an energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM and SEM/EDS). It has been found that the bran layer was richer in elemental compositions than the endosperm. The surface of rice sample was found to be etched and more porous after plasma treatment. The Ar/O2 plasma in H-mode was observed to offer higher effect. The surface contact angle was found to decrease from 120.1o ± 0.9o in untreated samples to 79.3o ± 0.6o and 99.2o ± 0.8o in plasma treated samples on E-and H-mode, respectively.

Theory of edge localized mode suppression by static resonant magnetic perturbations in the DIII-D tokamak

According to a recent paper [Hu et al., Phys. Plasmas 26, 120702 (2019)], mode penetration at the top of the pedestal is a necessary and sufficient condition for the suppression of edge localized modes (ELMs) by a resonant magnetic perturbation (RMPs) in an H-mode tokamak discharge. This paper employs asymptotic matching theory to model a particular DIII-D discharge in which ELMs were suppressed by an externally generated, static, n = 2, RMP whose amplitude was modulated at a frequency of 1 Hz. It is demonstrated that the response of the plasma to the applied RMP, in the immediate vicinities of the rational (i.e., resonant) surfaces, is governed by nonlinear, rather than by linear, physics. This is the case because the magnetic island widths associated with driven reconnection exceed the linear layer widths, even in cases where driven reconnection is strongly suppressed by plasma rotation. The natural frequency at a given rational surface (i.e., the helical frequency at which the locally resonant component of the RMP would need to propagate in order to maximize driven reconnection) is found to be offset from the local E×B frame in the ion diamagnetic direction. The size of the offset is mostly determined by neoclassical poloidal rotation. Finally, the predictions of a fully nonlinear plasma response model are found to be broadly consistent with the DIII-D experimental data.

Ion cyclotron emission driven by deuterium neutral beam injection and core fusion reaction ions in EAST

Ion cyclotron emissions (ICE) driven by high energy ions in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) are reported. The classic edge emissions driven by energetic neutral beam injection (NBI) deuterium ions at low magnetic field side, near the plasma pedestal region, are often observed. In addition, the ICE, the spectral peaks of which match the cyclotron frequencies of fusion ions and NBI deuterium ions near the magnetic axis are also detected. In ICE experiments, deuterium plasma is heated with deuterium NBI, without any ion cyclotron resonance heating. In H-mode discharges, edge localized mode can not only increase the intensity of the edge ICE, but also broaden its spectrum. ICE also appears at the time of plasma disruption in the EAST tokamak, this radiation seems to be driven by deuterium ions at the radial location of R = 1.85 m–2.05 m. These results lead to a practical way to monitor fusion alpha particles in deuterium–tritium devices such as ITER, DEMO and CFETR in the future.

The first implementation of active detachment feedback control in EAST PCS

EAST achieved 101.2 seconds H-mode discharge with total power injection up to 3MW in 2017. Consequently to the enhanced auxiliary heating power, the active divertor heat flux control is urgently needed in EAST. In 2018, the active divertor detachment feedback control was implemented successfully in EAST plasma control system (PCS) with divertor Langmuir probe measurements for evaluating the divertor particle flux. The control algorithm controlled the degree of detachment effectively during the 2018 EAST experiments through either D2 fueling in the low field side using SMBI or impurity seeding from the divertor volume in H-mode plasmas, without significant degradation of the core-plasma performance, i.e., exhibiting good core-edge-divertor integration. The algorithm implementation in PCS and experimental results will be reported in this paper. Further efforts will be made to extend active feedback control towards long-pulse H-mode detachment maintenance in the near future, which will benefit the high power, H-mode operation for ITER.

Shattered pellet penetration in low and high energy plasmas on DIII-D

Shattered pellet injection (SPI) has been adopted as the baseline disruption mitigation system for ITER, as the radiative payload penetration into DIII-D plasmas from SPI is superior to those using the massive gas injection (MGI) method. Because of the substantial differences in the energy content of ITER plasma and those in present experiments, reliable 3D MHD modeling, benchmarked against present experiments is needed to project to ITER plasmas. In support of these needs, the depth of SPI fragment penetration in DIII-D plasmas was investigated by injecting SPI into two discharges with vastly different energy content and pedestal height. 400 Torr-L pure Ne fragmented pellets at a velocity of about 200 m s−1 were injected into a 0.2 MJ L-mode discharge and a 2 MJ super H-mode discharge. Results show deep penetration of SPI fragments into low-energy plasmas in DIII-D. SPI fragment penetration is reduced as the plasma energy content increases, with some discharges exhibiting penetration that is confined to the outer regions of the plasma. The injected SPI fragments are also spread out over a distance of about 20 cm, which results in some fragments arriving near the end of or after the thermal quench is over.

Study of core plasma rotation characteristics of RF-heated H-mode discharges on experimental advanced superconducting tokamak

RF-heated H-mode plasmas are readily achieved with lower hybrid current drive and ICRF heating on experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST). Characteristics of H-mode plasma rotation are studied, including the behaviors for non-stationary and stationary H-mode discharges. Experimental results indicate that substantial co-current core rotation increment is observed at L-H transition. For non-stationary discharges with multiple L-H transitions, central plasma rotation varies as the plasma enters and exits the H-mode phase. Rotation increase over L-H transition is linearly correlated with plasma stored energy for both edge localized mode (ELM)-free phases and phases with type-III ELMs. For stationary H-mode discharges with type-III ELMs, core plasma rotation profile is elevated and remains stable during the H-mode phase, although the occurrence of ELMs tends to slow down the core rotation, especially for type-I ELMs where the entire core profiles are affected. Evolution of plasma rotation is fitted with a source-free transport equation and it is found that the momentum transport is dominated by diffusion and explains the flat profile in the core. Based on the Rice scaling and for the same stored energy increase, smaller increase in the core rotation is observed for H-mode discharges with type-III ELMs than for ELM-free discharges. A linear fit indicates that the slope is 75% larger for the ELM-free discharges data.