Abrupt onset of tongue deformation and phase space response of ions in magnetically-confined plasmas

K. Ida, T. Kobayashi, K. Itoh, M. Yoshinuma, T. Tokuzawa, T. Akiyama, C. Moon, H. Tsuchiya, Inagaki Shigeru, Sanae Itoh

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

An abrupt onset of the new tongue-shaped deformation of magnetic surface in magnetized plasmas, which was conjectured in since the 1960s but has not been observed, is experimentally identified just before an abrupt onset of a large-scale collapse event. Two novel properties of the event are identified. First, the transition of symmetry of perturbation (rather than a growth of linearly unstable MHD modes) was found to be a key for the onset of abrupt collapse, i.e., the transition of symmetry gives a new route to the collapse from stable state. Second, as a phase-space response of ions, the distortion from Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of epithermal ions was observed for the first time.

Original languageEnglish
Article number36217
JournalScientific reports
Volume6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 31 2016

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General

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