EFFECTS OF BOOTSTRAP CURRENT ON ENERGY CONFINEMENT OF TOKAMAK PLASMAS

Based on the principle of profile consistency and η_i-mode induced anomalous transport model, the enery confinement in tokamak plasmas is studied with inclusion of the bootstrap curreut in which the poloidal magnetic field is consistently deter-mined. The results show that bootstrap current has a significant effect on plasma confinement. If the bootstrap current is (15-30)% of the total current, global energy confinement time may increase by (20-45)%, and the maximum of related energy store is almost as much as twice the value without bootstrap current. Variation of the energy confinement time with the plasma parameters is of similar trend with Kaye-Goldston scaling. In addition, it can be seen that the radius of q=l surface decreases with bootstrap current, which may be one of the possible mechanisms for some experimental results where sawtooth oscillation disappears because of auxiliary heating.     

Sawtooth-like electron density oscillations under laser blow-off and lower hybrid current drive in HL-1M tokamak

By using of a six-channel HCN laser interferometer, the sawtooth-like density oscillations without being exhibited in the ohmic phase plasma have been observed during lower hybrid current drive (LHCD) discharges in the HL-1M device. There are often accompanied by injected impurity with laser blow-off. Analyses show that this kind of density sawtooth-like oscillation comes from the mutual effect of LHCD and impurity. An available mechanism is the loss of superthermal electrons by the magnetic perturbation, which is caused by the crash of the central accumulated impurities.