A modulated microwave reflectometry has been successfully developed on HL-2A, which can be used to measure the plasma density profile with time-delay method. This microwave reflectometry has two frequency ranges (26.5 to 40 GHz and 40 to 60 GHz) and it is suitable for measuring the plasma density ranging from 0.8×10^13 cm^-3 to 4.5×10^13 cm^-3. The temporal resolution is i ms and the spatial resolution is about 1 cm. This paper will present the basic principle of the microwave reflectometry, parameters calibration of the equipment and the experimental results on HL-2A tokamak.
The improved energy confinement has been observed in many tokamaks with center pellet injection since 1980's. The pellet enhanced performance ( PEP ) was achieved with high power additional heating in JET and other large tokamaks. The mechanism of the PEP mode has been analyzed theoretically . The analysis shows that a few mechanisms are involved in the reduction of anomalous transport and the relative weight of these mechanisms depends on the experimental conditions. In this paper we report the pellet injection experiment results without auxiliary heating on HL-2A tokamak. Our works focus on the investigation of the electron heat transport in ohmic discharges with center pellet fuelling.
DING Xuantong YANG Qingwei YAN Longwen LIU Dequan XIAO Zhenggui ZHU Genliang LIU Yi ZHOU Yan PAN Yudong CUI Zhengying LIU Zetian SHI Zhongbing JI Xiaoquan XIAO Weiwen LIU Yong
The fluctuation of the electron temperature has been measured by using the electron cyclotron emission imaging in the Hefei Tokamak-7 (HT-7) plasma. The electron temperature fluctuation with a broadband spectrum shows that it propagates in the electron diamagnetic drift direction, and the mean poloidal wave-number kθ is calculated to be about 1.58cm^-1, or k^-θρs ≈ 0.34. It indicates that the fluctuation should come from the electron drift wave turbulence. The linear global scaling of the electron temperature fluctuation with the gradient of electron temperature is consistent with the mixing length scale qualitatively. Evolution of spectrum of the fluctuation during the sawtooth oscillation phases is investigated, and the fluctuation is found to increase with the gradient of electron temperature increasing during most phases of the sawtooth oscillation. The results indicate that the electron temperature gradient is probably the driver of the fluctuation enhancement. The steady heat flux driven by electron temperature fluctuation is estimated and compared with the results from power balance estimation.
The pulse propagations of both the electron temperature and the electron density have been observed during pulse-modulated molecular beam injection experiments on HL-2A. The propagation depth of the cold pulse in the low field side is much longer than that in the high field side. The cold pulses cannot propagate to the plasma center from either the low field side or the high field side. The electron temperature in the plasma center does not change during MBI, but the electron density pulse perturbations can be observed in the plasma center.
Drift instability in plasma generated by electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) in KT- 5D device was investigated by using a fast camera and Langmuir probes. The similarity between the distribution of light intensity from the images and the plasma pressure indicates a nearly linear relationship. The discharge images taken by the camera and the plasma parameters measured by the probes also indicate the existence of low frequency turbulent events with a time scale less than a few mini-seconds.
An upgraded electron cyclotron emission imaging (ECEI) system consisting of new optics lenses with necessary electronics for receiving and processing signals for two dimension (2D) ECEI diagnostics was installed on EAST. Hyperboloid lens were adopted in the new system to optimize the spatial resolutions. The mixers array of sixteen elements measured the plasma electron cyclotron emission at eight frequencies simultaneously, and the profiles of the electron temperature and its fluctuation in an area of 20 cm (vertical) × 6 cm (horizontal) could then be analyzed. Evolution of sawtooth precursor and crash in EAST was observed.
Based on the single biasing electrode experiments to optimize the confinement of plasma in the device of KT-5C tokamak, dual-biasing electrodes were inserted into the KT5C plasma for the first time to explore the enhancing effects of biasing and the mechanisms of the biasing. By means of applying different combinations of biasing voltages onto the dual electrodes, the changes of Er, which are the key factor for boosting up the Er × B flow shear, were observed. The time evolution showed that the inner electrode played a major role in dual-biasing, which drew larger current than the outer one. The outer electrode produced little influence. It turned out that the dual-biasing electrodes were as effective as a single one in improving the plasma confinement, for the mechanism of biasing was essentially an edge effect.
Spatio-temporal evolutions of the sawteeth activities are measured simultaneously with a 16 channel high spatio-temporal resolution electron cyclotron emission (ECE) heterodyne radiometer on HT-7 and the evolutions of the sawteeth are found to be diffusive in character. By a perturbative analysis, the electron heat diffusivity Хe inferred by time-to-peak method and Fourier transform shows a good agreement. The value of electron heat diffusivity shows radial asymmetry between the low magnetic field side (LFS) and the high magnetic field side (HFS). It is observed that with the increase in plasma density, the electron heat diffusivity decreases and the confinement of energy is improved. By comparing with Хe^pb inferred by static power balance analysis, the result indicate that Хe^hp is larger than Хe^pb by a factor ranging from 2 to 10.