We define the safety factor q for the helical plasmas of the experiment RFX-mod by accounting for the actual three-dimensional nature of the magnetic flux surfaces. Such a profile is not monotonic but goes through a maximum located in the vicinity of the electron transport barriers measured by a high resolution Thomson scattering diagnostic. Helical states with a single axis obtained in viscoresistive magnetohydrodynamic numerical simulations exhibit similar nonmonotonic q profiles provided that the final states are preceded by a magnetic island phase, like in the experiment.
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Gobbin et al. (2011) studied this question.
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