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The essential role of zonal flow in the L-H transition and the suppression of turbulence have been studied with a long range correlation technique using Langmuir probe arrays in EAST tokamak. Two toroidally localized probe arrays are used to measure the zonal flow during L-H transition and H-L back transition. The energy ratio of the low frequency zonal flow to the total drift wave turbulence is calculated. During ELM-free H mode, the energy ratio is higher than that in L mode, which reveals the important role of zonal flows in regulating turbulence amplitude in L-H transition.

Zonal flows (ZFs) are observed during the electrode biasing (EB) high confinement mode (H-mode) using Langmuir probe arrays on the edge of J-TEXT tokamak. The long-distance correlation characteristics of floating potentials and interactions with turbulence are studied. During positive biasing H-mode, either the geodesic acoustic mode or low frequency ZF increases. Strong suppression of radial transport by ZFs is found in the low frequency region. The components of the radial particle flux without and with EB are compared in the frequency domain. The interaction between ZFs and ambient turbulence is also discussed. The results show that the rate of ZFs' shear is comparable with that of E×B shear, suggesting that ZFs could be the trigger of the biasing H-mode.

A compact torus injection system, KTX-CTI, has been developed for the planned injection experiments on the Keda Torus eXperiment (KTX) reversed field pinch (RFP) device to investigate the physics and engineering issues associated with interaction between a compact torus (CT) and RFP. The key interests include fueling directly into the reactor center, confinement improvement, and injection of momentum and helicity into the RFP discharges. The CT velocity and mass have been measured using a multichannel optical fiber interferometer, and for the first time the time evolution of CT density profile during CT propagation is obtained. The number of injected particles, the CT velocity and density on the discharge parameters have been characterized: the maximum hydrogen CT plasma mass, m_CT, is 50 μg, corresponding to 30% of the mass in a typical KTX plasma; the CT velocity exceed 120 km/s. It is firstly observed that multiple CTs can be produced and emitted during the very short period (<100 μs) in one discharge, which is significant for the future study of repetitive CT injection, even with an ultra-high frequency.

An optical fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometer at a wavelength of 1.55 µm has been developed for measurements of high electron density on compact torus (CT) plasmas with a high time resolution of 0.1 µs and high phase resolution of 6.4 × 10−4 rad. To improve density measurement accuracy, the phase noise of the interferometer has been investigated in detail and optimized. In the bench test, the interferometer was calibrated using a piezoelectric ceramic actuator with known stroke. Initial results on CT plasma show that the optical fiber interferometer provides reliable density measurements at two spatial locations and the bulk velocity of plasma can be determined by the method of time of flight.

The inward particle flux associated with the global long-lived mode (LLM) during the L–I–H transition on HL-2A tokamak has been measured. The inward particle flux arises from the phase change between density and radial velocity fluctuations, where density and velocity fluctuations are strongly correlated with magnetic fluctuations of LLM. Moreover, the radial velocity and its gradient rather than poloidal flow shear play an important role in particle transport associated with the large-scale mode. The strong nonlinear coupling between LLM and ambient turbulence has been confirmed, and this may contribute to most of the inward particle flux in the LLM during the I-phase state.

Compact Tours (CT) injection is a highly promising technique for the central fueling of future reactor-grade fusion devices since it features extremely high injection velocity and relatively high plasma mass. Recently, a CT injector for the EAST tokamak, EAST-CTI, was developed and platform-tested. In the first round of experiments conducted with low parameter settings, the maximum velocity and mass of the CT plasma were 150 km·s−1 and 90 µg, respectively. However, the parameters obtained by the EAST-CTI were still very low and were far from the requirements of a device such as the EAST that has a strong magnetic field. In the future, we plan to solve the spark problem that the EAST-CTI currently encounters (that mainly hinders the further development of experiments) through engineering methods and use greater power to obtain a more stable and suitable CT plasma for EAST.

Compact torus (CT) injection is one of the most promising methods for the central fuelling of next-generation reactor-grade fusion devices due to its high density, high velocity, and self-contained magnetised structure. A newly compact torus injector (CTI) device in Keda Torus eXperiment (KTX), named KTX-CTI, was successfully developed and tested at the University of Science and Technology in China. In this study, first, we briefly introduce the basic principles and structure of KTX-CTI, and then, present an accurate circuit model that relies on nonlinear regression analysis (NRA) for studying the current waveform of the formation region. The current waveform, displacement, and velocity of CT plasma in the acceleration region are calculated using this NRA-based one-dimensional point model. The agreement between the model results and the experimental results is better than in the previous general model results estimated by the device dimensions in previous. The next-step upgrading reference scheme of the KTX-CTI device is preliminarily investigated using this NRA-based point model. This research can provide insights for the development of experiments and future upgrades of the device.