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The external kink mode in diverted tokamaks
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 June 2016
Abstract
An explanation is provided for the disruptive instability in diverted tokamaks when the safety factor $q$ at the 95 % poloidal flux surface,
$q_{95}$, is driven below 2.0. The instability is a resistive kink counterpart to the current-driven ideal mode that traditionally explained the corresponding disruption in limited cross-sections (Shafranov, Sov. Phys. Tech. Phys., vol. 15, 1970, p. 175) when
$q_{edge}$, the safety factor at the outermost closed flux surface, lies just below a rational value
$m/n$. Experimentally, external kink modes are observed in limiter configurations as the current in a tokamak is ramped up and
$q_{edge}$ decreases through successive rational surfaces. For
$q_{edge}<2$, the instability is always encountered and is highly disruptive. However, diverted plasmas, in which
$q_{edge}$ is formally infinite in the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model, have presented a longstanding difficulty since the theory would predict stability, yet, the disruptive limit occurs in practice when
$q_{95}$, reaches 2. It is shown from numerical calculations that a resistive kink mode is linearly destabilized by the rapidly increasing resistivity at the plasma edge when
$q_{95}<2$, but
$q_{edge}\gg 2$. The resistive kink behaves much like the ideal kink with predominantly kink or interchange parity and no real sign of a tearing component. However, the growth rates scale with a fractional power of the resistivity near the
$q=2$ surface. The results have a direct bearing on the conventional edge cutoff procedures used in most ideal MHD codes, as well as implications for ITER and for future reactor options.
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- © Cambridge University Press 2016
References
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