Three-Dimensional Observation of an Helical Hot Structure during a Sawtooth Crash in the WT-3 Tokamak

S. Yamaguchi, H. Igami, H. Tanaka, T. Maekawa
2004 Physical Review Letters  
Sawtooth crashes in an Ohmically heated plasma in the WT-3 tokamak have been observed by using soft x-ray computer tomography at three different poloidal cross sections around the torus. Initially, collapsing proceeds slowly with keeping the helical structure of an m 1=n 1 hot core around the torus. It accelerates as the helical hot structure is strongly deformed and fades away in the manner that the hot core at the high field side becomes obscure and disappears, while that at the low field
more » ... is deformed into a thin crescent aligned along the inversion circle, which survives even at the completion of the crash.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.93.045005 pmid:15323770 fatcat:j6s2vhdgnndenhjqtvuakgrgpq