2025 Theses Doctoral

Coupled Tearing-Kink Modes and their Interactions with the Sawtooth Crash in HBT-EP

Chandra, Rian Naveen

This thesis reports observations of kink and tearing modes in the High Beta Tokamak - ExtendedPulse (HBT-EP) experiment. When unstable, these modes could limit the operation of tokamaks used for fusion power by terminating the plasma discharge and causing rapid loss of plasma energy. The aim of this work is to characterize the sudden transition after a sawtooth crash of coupled 2/1-3/1 tearing-kink modes into a sustained and disruptive 2/1 tearing mode.

The following diagnostic techniques are used. Kink and tearing modes in HBT-EP distort the plasma edge, measured by a large array of Mirnov sensors, and perturb the interior of the plasma, observed routinely with Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) detector arrays. Two arrays, with different transmission filters, are located with tangential views to estimate the time evolution of the plasma temperature profile. Four EUV arrays, with 16 detectors each, are positioned with different poloidal views for poloidal Extreme Ultraviolet (pEUV) emission tomography. The 2D emissive structures producing the pEUV signals are reconstructed with tomographic inversion using a pixel basis and fixed weighting smoothness regularization. Spatial and temporal correlations across these independent diagnostics are used to measure the evolution and structure of coupled modes using a technique called multidiagostic Singular Value Decomposition (mdSVD). In mdSVD, orthogonal modes are identified within any fixed time window with their unique spatial and temporal characteristics.

The technique uncovers: coherent behavior of coupled (𝑚/𝑛) = (2/1) and (3/1) tearing-kink modes and rapid changes in plasma structure associated with sawtooth crashes which trigger disruptive and nondisruptive tearing modes. HBT-EP’s unique radially movable wall is found to significantly influence sawtooth triggering of disruptive tearing modes. The onset of sawtooth-triggered modes depends both on the plasma-wall separation, or wall coupling, and on the value of edge safety factor qₐ. We confirm that the condition for sawtooth triggering of disruptive (𝑚/𝑛) = (2/1) tearing modes does not correspond to the mode’s single-helicity stability condition Δ′₂/₁. We identify a dependency of the sawtooth period 𝝉_𝑠𝑡 on the wall position and qa as a candidate to explain the onset of the saturated tearing mode. This thesis motivates future efforts to model the influence of a nearby resistive wall on sawtooth triggering of tearing modes.