X point effects on the ideal MHD modes in tokamaks in the description of dual-poloidal-region safety factor

TL;DR

This paper develops a dual-region safety factor flux coordinate system to analyze X-point effects on ideal MHD modes in tokamaks, revealing stabilization mechanisms and proposing new edge mode mitigation strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a dual q flux coordinate system and analyzes X-point effects on edge-localized MHD modes, suggesting alternative edge mode control methods.

Findings

X points stabilize certain edge modes

Axisymmetric modes near X points influence cross-field transport

Dual q description explains RMP challenges in double-null tokamaks

Abstract

The flux coordinates with dual-region safety factor (q) in the poloidal direction are developed in this work. The X-point effects on the ideal MHD modes in tokamaks are then analyzed using this coordinate system. Since the X-point effects mainly affect the edge region, the modes localized at the tokamak edge are particularly examined. Two types of modes are studied. The first is related to the conventional peeling or peeling-ballooning modes. The mode existence aligned with the local magnetic field in the poloidally core region, as observed experimentally, is confirmed. The X points are shown to contribute to a stabilizing effect for the conventionally treated modes with the surface-averaged q and with the tokamak edge portion truncated. The other is the axisymmetric modes localized in the vicinity of X points, which can affect the cross-field-line transport near the X points. The existence of axisymmetric modes points to the possibility of applying a toroidally axisymmetric resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) in the X-point area for mitigating the edge localized modes, which can be an alternative to the current RMP design. The dual q description also has important implications for the existing non-axisymmetric RMP concept. It helps to understand why the RMP suppression of edge localized modes is difficult to achieve in the double-null tokamak configurations and points to the possibility of further improving the current RMP concept by considering the alignment to the local q.