Formation and Structure of Transport Barriers During Confinement Transitions in Toroidal Plasma

Density pedestal formation is studied experimentally during spontaneous low-to-high confinement transitions in the H-1 heliac. Poloidally extended potential structures, or zonal flows, seem to play the major role both in the spatial structure and in the temporal evolution of the pedestal formation. Zonal flows transiently generate radially localized maxima in the radial electric-field shear in L mode which coincides with the radial location of the pedestal in H mode.