Advanced Tokamak: The Strongly Reversed Central Magnetic Shear Profile

TL;DR

This review discusses the strongly reversed shear profile in advanced tokamaks, highlighting its potential for steady-state operation, energy confinement, and stability, along with current drive methods and experimental/simulation results.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the reversed shear profile, its generation, stability considerations, and experimental validation in advanced tokamak research.

Findings

Reversed shear profiles enable high energy confinement and bootstrap current.

Suppression of MHD instabilities is crucial for stable reversed shear operation.

Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of reversed shear regimes in multiple tokamaks.

Abstract

This review article will offer a qualitative overview of the strongly reversed shear profile for steady-state operation in tokamaks. For a steady-state reactor to be commercially viable, it is necessary to have a large bootstrap fraction. Currently, there appears great potential in an Advanced Tokamak (AT) regime, namely the hollow current profile (strongly reversed shear). This mode is characterized by high poloidal beta, broad current profiles, strong internal and edge pressure gradients, and relatively good magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability against Neoclassical Tearing Modes (NTMs) and ballooning modes. The n=1 and n=2 kink modes, resistive wall modes, and double tearing modes are of concern in the reversed shear profile, and avoidance and/or suppression of these modes is necessary. Although there is a relatively low net plasma current in the reversed shear, the regime appears to have excellent energy confinement properties due to the naturally occurring Internal Transport Barriers (ITBs) caused by the substantial bootstrap currents, and Edge Transport Barriers (ETBs), which can form from ELM-free H-Mode (QH-Mode), to form the Quiescent Double Barrier (QDBs). The reversed shear can be generated by freezing the current profile, through MHD effects or substantial heating and/or current drive during the current ramp up phase, and is sustained by off-axis non-inductive current drive sources, such as the Neutral Beam Current Drive (NBCD), Lower Hybrid Current Drive (LHCD), and Helicon Current Drive (HCD). Experimental results by DIII-D, JT-60U, ASDEX Upgrade, JET, PBX-M, COMPASS-D, and K-STAR, simulation models and codes, such as Lower Hybrid Simulation and STELION, and theoretical reactors, such as ARIES-RS, ARIES-AT and SSTR are referenced.