The internal transport barrier (ITB) has been obtained in ELMy H-mode plasmas by neutron beam injection and lower hybrid wave heating on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). The ITB structure has been observed in profiles of ion temperature, electron temperature, and electron density within ρ<0.5. It was also observed that the ITB formation is stepwise. Due to the ITB formation, the confinement quality H 98y2 increases from 1 to 1.1 and the normalized beta, β N , increases from 1.5 to near 2. The fishbone activity observed during the ITB phase suggests the central safety factor q(0)∼1. Transport coefficients are calculated by particle balance and power balance analysis, showing an obvious reduction after the ITB formation.

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) has demonstrated, for the first time, long-pulse divertor plasmas over 400 s, entirely driven by lower hybrid current drive (LHCD), and further extended high-confinement plasmas, i.e. H-modes, over 30 s with predominantly LHCD and advanced lithium wall conditioning. Many new and exciting physics results have been obtained in the quest for long-pulse operations. The key findings are as follows: (1) access to H-modes in EAST favours the divertor configuration with the ion ∇B drift directed away from the dominant X-point; (2) divertor asymmetry during edge-localized modes (ELMs) also appears to be dependent on the toroidal field direction, with preferential particle flow opposite to the ion ∇B drift; (3) LHCD induces a striated heat flux (SHF), enhancing heat deposition away from the strike point, and the degree of SHF can be modified by supersonic molecule beam injection; (4) the long-pulse H-modes in EAST exhibit a confinement quality between type-I and type-III ELMy H-modes, with H98(y,2) ∼ 0.9, similar to type-II ELMy H-modes.

The first results of edge-localized mode (ELM) pacing using small spherical lithium granules injected mechanically into H-mode discharges are reported. Triggering of ELMs was accomplished using a simple rotating impeller to inject sub-millimetre size granules at speeds of a few tens of meters per second into the outer midplane of the EAST fusion device. During the injection phase, ELMs were triggered with near 100% efficiency and the amplitude of the induced ELMs as measured by Dα was clearly reduced compared to contemporaneous naturally occurring ELMs. In addition, a wide range of granule penetration depths was observed. Moreover, a substantial fraction of the injected granules appeared to penetrate up to 50% deeper than the 3 cm nominal EAST H-mode pedestal width. The observed granule penetration was, however, less deep than suggested by ablation modelling carried out after the experiment. The observation that ELMs can be triggered using the injection of something other than frozen hydrogenic pellets allows for the contemplation of lithium or beryllium-based ELM pace-making on future fusion devices. This change in triggering paradigm would allow for the decoupling of the ELM-triggering process from the plasma-fuelling process which is currently a limitation on the performance of hydrogen-based ELM mitigation by injected pellets.

A 4.6 GHz lower-hybrid current drive (LHCD) system has been firstly commissioned in EAST in the 2014 campaign. The first LHCD results with 4.6 GHz show that LHW can be coupled to plasma with a low reflection coefficient, drive plasma current and plasma rotation, modify the plasma current profile, and heat plasma effectively. By means of configuration optimization and local gas puffing near the LHW antenna, good LHW-plasma coupling with a reflection coefficient less than 5% is obtained. The maximum LHW power coupled to plasma is up to 3.5 MW. The current drive (CD) efficiency is up to 1.1 × 10 19 A m −2 W −1 and the central electron temperature is above 4 keV, suggesting that LH power could be mainly deposited in the core region, which is in agreement with code simulation. Experiments show that the current profile is effectively modified and toroidal rotation in the co-current direction is driven by the LHCD. Also, the CD efficiency and current profile depend on the launched wave spectrum, suggesting the possibility of controlling the current profile by changing the phase difference. Repeatable H-mode plasma is obtained by either the 4.6 GHz LHCD system alone, or together with a 2.45 GHz LHCD system, the NBI (neutral beam injection) system. The different ELM features of H-mode between the different heating methods are under investigation.

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) has recently achieved a variety of H-mode regimes with different edge-localized mode (ELM) dynamics, including type-I ELMs, compound ELMs, which are manifested by the onset of a large spike followed by a sequence of small spikes on Dα emissions, usual type-III ELMs, and very small ELMs. This newly observed very small ELMy H-mode appears to be similar to the type-II ELMy H-mode, with higher repetition frequency (∼1 kHz) and lower amplitude than the type-III ELMy H-mode, exhibiting an intermediate confinement level between type-I and type-III ELMy H-modes. The energy loss and divertor power load are systematically characterized for these different ELMy H-modes to provide a physics basis for the next-step high-power long-pulse operations in EAST. Both type-I and compound ELMs exhibit good confinement (H98(y,2) ∼ 1). A significant loss of the plasma stored energy occurs at the onset of type-I ELMs (∼8%) and compound ELMs (∼5%), while no noticeable change in the plasma stored energy is observed for the small ELMs, including both type-III ELMs and very small ELMs. The peak heat flux on divertor targets for type-I ELMs currently achieved in EAST is about 10 MW m−2, as determined from the divertor-embedded triple Langmuir probe system with high time resolution. As expected, type-III ELMs lead to much smaller divertor power loads with a peak heat flux of about 2 MW m−2. Peak power loads for compound ELMs are between those for type-I and type-III ELMs. It is remarkable that the new very small ELMy H-modes exhibit even lower target power deposition than type-III ELMs, with the peak heat flux generally below 1 MW m−2. These very small ELMs are usually accompanied by broadband fluctuations with frequencies ranging from 20 to 50 kHz, which may promote particle and power exhaust throughout the very small ELMy H-mode regime.

By using the recently developed Thomson scattering diagnostic, the pedestal structure of the H-mode with neutral beam injection (NBI) or/and lower hybrid wave (LHW) heating on EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) is analyzed in detail. We find that a higher ratio of the power of the NBI to the total power of the NBI and the lower hybrid wave (LHW) will produce a large and regular different edge-localized mode (ELM), and a lower ratio will produce a small and irregular ELM. The experiments show that the mean pedestal width has good correlation with β p , ped 0.5 , The pedestal width appears to be wider than that on other similar machines, which could be due to lithium coating. However, it is difficult to draw any conclusion of correlation between ρ * and the pedestal width for limited ρ * variation and scattered distribution. It is also found that T e/ ∇ T e is ~2 cm, which is the same as the AUG (ASDEX Upgrade), DIII-D and JET (Joint European Torus) results.

We report an observation of robust suppression of edge-localized modes (ELMs) in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), enabled by continuous boron (B) powder injection. Edge harmonic oscillations appear during B powder injection, providing sufficient particle transport to maintain constant density and avoid impurity accumulation in ELM-stable plasmas. Quasi-steady ELM suppression discharges are demonstrated with modest energy confinement improvement and over a wide range of conditions: heating power and technique variation, electron density range over a factor ∼3.5, deuterium or helium ion species, and with either direction of the toroidal magnetic field. ELM suppression is observed above a threshold edge B intensity and ceases within 0.5 s of termination of the B injection. In contrast to ELM suppression accompanied by recycling reduction during Li powder injection in NSTX and EAST (Maingi et al 2018 Nucl. Fusion 58 024003), reduced recycling due to hydrogenic species retention is unnecessary for the ELM suppression with B powder injection, paving the way for its consideration as an ELM control tool for future fusion devices.

Plasma heating using fast waves was successfully performed on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in the H minority regime in deuterium plasmas at 27 MHz and B o = 2.0 T. With 1.0 MW of ion cyclotron range of frequency (ICRF) power injected at a line-averaged electron density of 4.0 × 1019 m−3, the electron temperature increased from 1.0 keV to above 2.0 keV and the loop voltage dropped. An increase in the stored energy by 30 kJ was obtained. The first H-mode plasma of 6.4 s was achieved with a combination of lower hybrid wave and ICRF heating. Density pump-out was observed during L-mode discharges at a high electron density of 4.0 × 1019 m−3. In these discharges, re-attachment of the plasma was observed when ICRF power was applied.