Modeling of Neoclassical Tearing Mode Stability for Generalized Toroidal Geometry
Authors: A.L. Rosenberg, D.A. Gates, A. Pletzer, J.E. Menard, S.E. Kruger, C.C. Hegna, F. Paoletti, and S. Sabbagh
Date of PPPL Report: August 2002
Published in: Physics of Plasmas 9 (November 2002) 4567-4572
Neoclassical tearing modes (NTMs) can lead to disruption and loss of confinement. Previous analysis of these modes used large aspect ratio, low-beta (plasma pressure/magnetic pressure) approximations to determine the effect of NTMs on tokamak plasmas. A more accurate tool is needed to predict the onset of these instabilities. As a follow-up to recent theoretical work, a code has been written which computes the tearing mode island growth rate for arbitrary tokamak geometry. It calls PEST-3 [A. Pletzer et al., J. Comput. Phys. 115, 530 (1994)] to compute delta prime, the resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) matching parameter. The code also calls the FLUXGRID routines in NIMROD [A.H. Glasser et al., Plasma Phys. Controlled Fusion 41, A747 (1999)] for Dnc, DI and DR [C.C. Hegna, Phys. Plasmas 6, 3980 (1999); A.H. Glasser et al., Phys. Fluids 18, 875 (1975)], which are the bootstrap current driven term and the ideal and resistive interchange mode criterion, respectively. In addition to these components, the NIMROD routines calculate as-H, a new correction to the Pfirsch-Schlüter term. Finite parallel transport effects were added and a National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) [M. Ono et al., Nucl. Fusion 40, 557 (2000)] equilibrium was analyzed. Another program takes the output of PEST-3 and allows the user to specify the rational surface, island width, and amount of detail near the perturbed surface to visualize the total helical flux. The results of this work will determine the stability of NTMs in an spherical torus (ST) [Y.-K.M. Peng et al., Nucl. Fusion 26, 769 (1986)] plasma with greater accuracy than previously achieved.