Magnetic islands and plasma rotation in the Tokamak Chauffage Alfvén Brésilien tokamak

Collisional plasma rotation in the Tokamak Chauffage Alfvén Brésilien (TCABR) tokamak [J. H. F. Severo, I. C. Nascimento, V. S. Tsypin, and R. M. O. Galvão, Nucl. Fusion 43, 1047 (2003)] has been experimentally studied. It was found that the measured plasma poloidal rotation velocity agrees within error limits with neoclassical theoretical predictions, and toroidal velocity with experimental results obtained in analogous tokamaks, almost everywhere along the minor radius r, except for measurements at r/a≃0.56 and r/a≃0.89 (the minor radius of TCABR tokamak a=18 cm). For the first point, the measured plasma rotation velocities are higher than the velocity of the background plasma, respectively ∼30% and ∼10% for the poloidal and toroidal rotation velocities. Using a set of 22 Mirnov coils displaced poloidally, magnetic field perturbations were measured in shots adjusted to reproduce the ones of the previous plasma rotation measurements, and the results confirm that in the region r/a≃0.89 the plasma rotates together with the magnetic island (3,1).