Several types of edge plasma perturbations in the TUMAN-3 tokamak [Proceedings of the 13th International Atomic Energy Agency Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion Research, 1990 (International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1991), Vol. 1, p. 509] have been demonstrated to trigger the Ohmic H-mode transition. It is shown that three different methods, (1) radial electric field of either sign imposed by an electrode biased up to 500 V, (2) perturbation of the edge plasma density by strong gas puffing, and (3) LiD pellet injection, bring about the Ohmic H mode. In biasing experiments, the degree of improvement of particle and energy confinement depends on the polarity of the electric field and is higher for negative biasing. The evaporation of a LiD pellet (V∼150 m/sec, size ∼0.3 mm, density perturbation∼50%) in the peripheral region of the plasma column can also lead to the H-mode transition. Experimental results are shown to be in reasonable agreement with the theory of radial electric fields in tokamaks.

Experiments in the tokamaks TEXTOR, CASTOR, T-10 and ISTTOK, as well as in the reversed field pinch RFX have provided new and complementary evidence on the physics of the universal mechanism of E × B velocity shear stabilization of turbulence, concomitant transport barrier formation and radial conductivity by using various edge biasing techniques.In TEXTOR the causality between transport reduction and induced electric fields in the edge has been for the first time clearly demonstrated. The high electric field gradients have been identified as the cause for the quenching of turbulent cells. A quantitative analysis of the measured transport reduction is in good agreement with theoretical predictions. The scaling of plasma turbulence suppression with velocity shear has been established, revealing the densitypotential cross-phase as a key element. Reduction in poloidal electric field, temperature, and density fluctuations across the shear layer lead to a reduction

Pattern recognition is becoming an increasingly important tool for making inferences from the massive amounts of data produced in fusion experiments. The purpose is to contribute to physics studies and plasma control. In this work, we address the visualization of plasma confinement data, the (real-time) identification of confinement regimes and the establishment of a scaling law for the energy confinement time. We take an intrinsically probabilistic approach, modeling data from the International Global H-mode Confinement Database with Gaussian distributions. We show that pattern recognition operations working in the associated probability space are considerably more powerful than their counterparts in a Euclidean data space. This opens up new possibilities for analyzing confinement data and for fusion data processing in general. We hence advocate the essential role played by measurement uncertainty for data interpretation in fusion experiments.

This paper summarizes experimental results from recent studies on intrinsic rotation at the plasma edge of the TCABR tokamak. These results were obtained after upgrading the number of channels of the rotation diagnostic to three. The measurements were carried out in the collisional (Pfirsch-Schluter) regime and the rotation profiles of the ions were obtained from the Doppler shifts of the impurity carbon lines, CIII (464.74 nm), and CVI (529.06 nm). Results on the correlation between toroidal rotation at the plasma edge and direction of gas injection are also presented. They indicate that the direction of gas injection has a small effect on rotation; the velocity of the background neutral hydrogen is affected by direct momentum transfer from the injected gas (also hydrogen), while the carbon ions' velocity is affected by inward radial friction force between the injected gas atoms and ions, increasing their velocity in the opposite sense of the plasma current.

The suppression of anomalous transport and/or reduction of neoclassical transport caused by the Alfvén-wave-induced shear of the radial electric field in tokamaks is investigated. The simple quantitative estimates reported in previous papers are checked by a consistent evaluation of the profile of the radial electric field created by the resonant absorption of Alfvén waves. The radial variations of the ion viscosity and heat conductivity across the mode conversion layer are evaluated both in the banana and potato regions. In agreement with previous analytical results, it is shown that the kinetic Alfvén waves may play the role of a convenient mechanism for reduction of anomalous and neoclassical transport and formation of transport barriers in tokamaks.