3D MHD modelling of plasmoid drift following massive material injection in a tokamak

Mechanisms of plasmoid drift in the presence of massive material injection are studied via 3D non-linear MHD modelling with the JOREK code, using a transient neutral source deposited on the low field side midplane of a JET H-mode plasma to clarify basic processes and compare with existing theory. The simulations confirm the important role of the propagation of shear Alfv\'en waves (SAWs) from both ends of the plasmoid ("SAW braking") and the development of external resistive currents along magnetic field lines ("P\'egouri\'e braking") in limiting charge separation and thus the E× B plasmoid drift, where E and B are the electric and magnetic fields, respectively. The drift velocity is found to be limited by the SAW braking for cases with relatively small source amplitude while the P\'egouri\'e braking is shown to be stronger with larger toroidal extent of the source, both in good agreement with existing theory. The simulations also identity the key role of the size of the E× B flow region on plasmoid drift and show that the saturated velocity caused by dominant SAW braking agrees well with theory when considering an effective pressure within the E× B flow region. The existence of SAWs in the simulations is demonstrated and the 3D picture of plasmoid drift is also discussed.