The effect of time-varying flow-shear on the nonlinear stability of the boundary of magnetized toroidal plasmas

TL;DR

This paper introduces a generalized complex Ginzburg-Landau model to simulate edge-localized modes in magnetized tokamak plasmas, emphasizing the role of time-varying flow shear in boundary stability.

Contribution

It presents a novel phenomenological model capturing key boundary instability dynamics in high-temperature plasmas, highlighting the importance of flow shear variations.

Findings

Model reproduces observed boundary instability features in KSTAR tokamak.

Time-varying flow shear is essential for realistic instability dynamics.

Transitions between eigenmodes and rapid structural changes are simulated.

Abstract

We propose a phenomenological yet very general model in a form of generalized complex Ginzburg-Landau equation to understand the dynamics of the quasi-periodic fluid instabilities (called edge-localized modes) in the boundary of toroidal magnetized high-temperature plasmas. The model reproduces key dynamical features of the boundary instabilities observed in the high-confinement state plasmas on the KSTAR tokamak, including quasi-steady states characterized by field-aligned filamentary eigenmodes, transitions between different eigenmodes, and rapid transition to non-modal filamentary structure prior to the relaxation. It is found that the inclusion of time-varying perpendicular sheared flow is crucial for reproducing the observed dynamical features.