Investigation of toroidal acceleration and potential acceleration forces in EAST and J-TEXT plasmas

TL;DR

This study investigates the mechanisms behind intrinsic toroidal rotation in tokamak plasmas by analyzing acceleration forces in EAST and J-TEXT experiments, highlighting the roles of electric fields and friction.

Contribution

It provides experimental analysis of toroidal acceleration forces and evaluates their contributions to intrinsic rotation in tokamak plasmas, especially focusing on electric fields and friction effects.

Findings

Toroidal acceleration ranged from -50 km/s^2 to 70 km/s^2.

Electric fields can drive co-current acceleration much larger than observed.

Electron-ion friction contributes to counter-current acceleration.

Abstract

In order to produce intrinsic rotation, bulk plasmas must be collectively accelerated by the net force exerted on them, which results from both driving and damping forces. So, to study the possible mechanisms of intrinsic rotation generation, it is only needed to understand characteristics of driving and damping terms because the toroidal driving and damping forces induce net acceleration which generates intrinsic rotation. Experiments were performed on EAST and J-TEXT for ohmic plasmas with net counter- and co-current toroidal acceleration generated by density ramping up and ramping down. Additionally on EAST, net co-current toroidal acceleration was also formed by LHCD or ICRF. For the current experimental results, toroidal acceleration was between - 50 km/s^2 in counter-current direction and 70 km/s^2 in co-current direction. According to toroidal momentum equation, toroidal electric field (E\-(\g(f))), electron-ion toroidal friction, and toroidal viscous force etc. may play roles in the evolution of toroidal rotation. To evaluate contribution of each term, we first analyze characteristics of E\-(\g(f)). E\-(\g(f)) is one of the co-current toroidal forces that acts on the plasma as a whole and persists for the entire discharge period. It was shown to drive the co-current toroidal acceleration at a magnitude of 10^3 km/s^2, which was much larger than the experimental toroidal acceleration observed on EAST and J-TEXT. So E\-(\g(f)) is one of co-current forces producing cocurrent intrinsic toroidal acceleration and rotation. Meanwhile, it indicates that there must be a strong counter-current toroidal acceleration resulting from counter-current toroidal forces. Electron-ion toroidal friction is one of the counter-current toroidal forces because global electrons move in the counter-current direction in order to produce a toroidal plasma current.