Spatiotemporal structures of edge limit-cycle oscillation before L-to-H transition in the JFT-2M tokamak

Phys Rev Lett. 2013 Jul 19;111(3):035002. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.035002. Epub 2013 Jul 17.

Abstract

In this Letter, we report analyses of spatiotemporal dynamics of turbulence and structure in the limit-cycle oscillation (LCO) that precedes an L-to-H transition. Zonal flows are not observed during LCO, and the oscillation is the periodic generations or decays of barrier with edge-localized mean flow. Oscillatory Reynolds stress is found to be too small to accelerate the LCO flow, by considering the dielectric constant in magnetized toroidal plasmas. Propagation of changes of the density gradient and turbulence amplitude into the core is also observed.