New High-Confinement Regime with Fast Ions in the Core of Fusion Plasmas.

The key result of the present work is the theoretical prediction and observation of the formation of a new type of transport barrier in fusion plasmas, called F-ATB (fast ion-induced anomalous transport barrier). As demonstrated through state-of-the-art global electrostatic and electromagnetic simulations, the F-ATB is characterized by a full suppression of the turbulent transport-caused by strongly sheared, axisymmetric E×B flows-and an increase of the neoclassical counterpart, albeit keeping the overall fluxes at significantly reduced levels. The trigger mechanism is shown to be a mainly electrostatic resonant interaction between suprathermal particles, generated via ion-cyclotron-resonance heating, and plasma microturbulence.

Real-time diamagnetic flux measurements on ASDEX Upgrade.

Real-time diamagnetic flux measurements are now available on ASDEX Upgrade. In contrast to the majority of diamagnetic flux measurements on other tokamaks, no analog summation of signals is necessary for measuring the change in toroidal flux or for removing contributions arising from unwanted coupling to the plasma and poloidal field coil currents. To achieve the highest possible sensitivity, the diamagnetic measurement and compensation coil integrators are triggered shortly before plasma initiation when the toroidal field coil current is close to its maximum.

Convective and diffusive energetic particle losses induced by shear Alfvén waves in the ASDEX upgrade tokamak.

We present here the first phase-space characterization of convective and diffusive energetic particle losses induced by shear Alfvén waves in a magnetically confined fusion plasma. While single toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes (TAE) and Alfvén cascades (AC) eject resonant fast ions in a convective process, an overlapping of AC and TAE spatial structures leads to a large fast-ion diffusion and loss. Diffusive fast-ion losses have been observed with a single TAE above a certain threshold in the fluctuation amplitude.