Observation of oscillatory radial electric field relaxation in a helical plasma

Measurements of the relaxation of a zonal electrostatic potential perturbation in a non-axisymmetric magnetically confined plasma are presented. A sudden perturbation of the plasma equilibrium is induced by the injection of a cryogenic hydrogen pellet in the TJ-II stellarator, which is observed to b...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Alonso, J, Sanchez, E, Calvo, I, Velasco, J, Perfilov, S, Chmyga, A, Eliseev, L, Krupnik, L, Estrada, T, Kleiber, R, McCarthy, K, Melnikov, A, Monreal, P, Parra Diaz, F, Zhezhera, A, TJ-II Team
Format: Journal article
Published: American Physical Society 2017
Description
Summary:Measurements of the relaxation of a zonal electrostatic potential perturbation in a non-axisymmetric magnetically confined plasma are presented. A sudden perturbation of the plasma equilibrium is induced by the injection of a cryogenic hydrogen pellet in the TJ-II stellarator, which is observed to be followed by a damped oscillation in the electrostatic potential. The waveform of the relaxation is consistent with theoretical calculations of zonal potential relaxation in a non-axisymmetric magnetic geometry. The turbulent transport properties of a magnetic confinement configuration are expected to depend on the features of the collisionless damping of zonal flows, of which the present letter is the first direct observation.