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SYPZ: Plasmaphysik und Fusionsforschung - Energie für die Zukunft

SYPZ 2: SYPZ II

SYPZ 2.3: Invited Talk

Tuesday, March 8, 2005, 15:00–15:30, HU 3038

Active Control of MHD Instabilities in Fusion Plasmas — •Hartmut Zohm — Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Boltzmannstr. 2, 85748 Garching

Global MHD instabilities limit the operational space of magnetically confined fusion plasmas. The driving free energy is associated with the gradient of the kinetic plasma pressure and, in devices which rely on strong internal currents to generate the confining field, the gradient of the current density. With the availability of localised heating and current drive in the Electron Cyclotron frequeny range, it has recently become possible to improve the stability of tokamak plasmas against MHD instabilities with relatively modest power requirements. The talk reviews experimental results obtained on a number of tokamak experiments worldwide. It is also shown that significant progress has been made in understanding these phenomena.