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Make tokamak plasmas rotate by small axisymmetric magnetic disturbances
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La rotation du plasma joue un rôle crucial dans le confinement de chaleur et de particules dans les tokamaks, y compris dans l’apparition du mode H de confinement amélioré.
Plasma rotation plays a crucial role on heat and particle confinement in tokamaks including the appareance of the H (high confinement) mode.
The classical equilibrium equation for tokamak plasma is the Grad-Shafranov equation, that neglects the plasma velocity and involves the pressure gradient although pressure is just a passive scalar and not an actuator. We must then go further to consider the issue of plasma velocity within a magnetohydrodynamic framework.
In the article just released Oueslati, Firpo, Physics of Plasmas 27, 102501 (2020), the axisymmetric steady states of the visco-resistive magnetohydrodynamic equations, including the non-linear (v.∇)v term, have been computed using the finite element method.
Playing on boundary conditions with external magnetic perturbations offers a way to break the natural up-down symmetry of the system and produce a net toroidal flow.
Using realistic parameters, some numerical results indicate that small perturbations of the magnetic configuration may be used to increase steady-state speeds and promote tokamak plasma confinement while preserving axisymmetry (which is a good way to prevent turbulence).

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