Impact of rotating resonant magnetic perturbation fields on plasma edge electron density and temperature

Rotating resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) fields impose a characteristic modulation to the edge electron density n e(r, t) and temperature T e(r, t) fields, which depends on the relative rotation f rel between external RMP field and plasma fluid. The n e(r, t) and T e(r, t) fields measured in the edge (r/a = 0.9–1.05) of TEXTOR L-mode plasmas are in close correlation with the local magnetic vacuum topology for low relative rotation f rel = −0.2 kHz. In comparison with the 3D neutral and plasma transport code EMC3-Eirene, this provides substantial experimental evidence that for low relative rotation level and high resonant field amplitudes (normalized radial field strength ), a stochastic edge with a remnant island chain dominated by diffusive transport exists. Radially outside a helical scrape-off layer, the so-called laminar zone embedded into a stochastic domain is found to exist. In contrast for high relative rotation of f rel = 1.8 kHz, the measured modulation of n e is shifted by π/2 toroidally with respect to the modelled vacuum topology. A pronounced flattening in T e(r) and a reduction in n e(r) is measured at the resonant flux surface and represents a clear signature for a magnetic island, which is phase shifted with respect to the vacuum island position. A correlated shift of the laminar zone radially outwards at the very plasma edge is observed suggesting that the actual near-field structure at the perturbation source is determined by the plasma response as well.