Identifying the impact of rotation, anisotropy, and energetic particle physics in tokamaks

In this paper we study the effects of poloidal and toroidal rotation, and anisotropy in tokamaks. To resolve these effects from uncertainties in the data, we introduce a Bayesian inference framework which calculates the magnetic configuration probabilistically using motional Stark effect and magnetic data. Drawing on these calculations, we compute the poloidal and toroidal Mach numbers in MAST for a discharge with good rotation data. Our calculations confirm that the poloidal Mach number M s,θ = v θ / v i × B / B θ is near zero (with v θ and v i the poloidal and thermal velocity, respectively), even on the outboard side where the scaling of poloidal field strength B θ to total field B is large. In contrast, the toroidal rotation of this plasma reaches a Mach number of 0.5 on axis. The impact of the toroidal rotation on the equilibrium reconstructions of the plasma is however small: it acts to increase the radius of the magnetic axis by ≈1%, and lower the central safety factor by ≈5%. In comparison, corrections to make the pressure profile consistent with internal measurements such as charge exchange recombination spectroscopy and Thomson scattering have a much larger impact. In other work we compute the level of anisotropy from a TRANSP simulation of a neutral beam-heated MAST discharge. This shows a large level of anisotropy, with p ⊥ / p ∥ ≈ 1.7, sufficient to boost the central safety factor by 15%. For this discharge, which is representative of many MAST discharges, the effect of anisotropy and consistent pressure profiles is more pronounced than the toroidal rotation of the plasma.