A resistive magnetodynamics analysis of sawtooth driven tearing modes in tokamak plasmas

摘要

In this paper, a resistive magnetohydrodynamics model is applied to study the effect of sawtooth driven on classicaleoclassical tearing modes in tokamak plasmas. In a model of forced reconnection, the sawtooth is considered as a boundary disturbance for m > 1 modes and causes the islands growth of m = 2/1 and 3/2 modes through toroidal coupling. Theoretical and numerical analyses show that the linear growth of the modes is driven by precursors of the sawtooth through the linear mode coupling, while differential rotation has great effect on both the linear and the nonlinear development of the modes. It is believed that the tearing mode can be suppressed by control of the sawtooth by radio frequency heating or current drive. Published by AIP Publishing.