Effects of turbulence spreading and symmetry breaking on edge shear flow during sawtooth cycles in J-TEXT tokamak

TL;DR

This study investigates how turbulence spreading and symmetry breaking influence edge shear flow during sawtooth cycles in the J-TEXT tokamak, revealing their roles in shear flow enhancement post-sawtooth crashes.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the mechanisms of turbulence spreading and symmetry breaking affecting shear flow dynamics during sawtooth events in tokamaks.

Findings

Turbulence pulses propagate faster than heat pulses after sawtooth crashes.

Enhanced edge turbulence precedes temperature increase, driven by local gradients and turbulence spreading.

Turbulence spreading and symmetry breaking significantly contribute to shear flow enhancement.

Abstract

Sawtooth oscillations can trigger off heat and turbulence pulses that propagate into the edge plasma, and thus enhancing the edge shear flow and inducing a transition from low confinement mode to high confinement mode. The influences of turbulence spreading and symmetry breaking on edge shear flow with sawtooth crashes are observed in the J-TEXT tokamak. The edge plasma turbulence and shear flow are measured using a fast reciprocating electrostatic probe array. After sawtooth crashes, the heat and turbulence pulses in the core propagate to the edge, with the turbulence pulse being faster than the heat pulse. After sawtooth crashes, the edge electron temperature increases and the edge turbulence is enhanced, with turbulence preceding temperature. The enhanced edge turbulence is mainly composed of two parts: the turbulence driven by local gradient and the turbulence spreading from core to edge. The development of the estimated turbulence spreading rate is prior to that of the turbulence driving rate. The increase in the turbulence intensity can cause the turbulent Reynold stress and its gradient to increase, thereby enhancing shear flows and radial electric fields. Turbulence spreading leads the edge Reynolds stresses to develop and the shear flow to be faster than edge electron temperature. The Reynolds stress arises from the symmetry breaking of the turbulence wave number spectrum. After sawtooth collapses, the joint probability density function of radial wave number and poloidal wave number of turbulence intensity exhibits strong asymmetry. These results show that the turbulence spreading and symmetry breaking can enhance turbulent Reynolds stress, thereby driving shear flows, after sawtooth has crashed.