Mitigation of edge localised modes with magnetic perturbations in ASDEX Upgrade

The first stage of a significant enhancement of the ASDEX Upgrade experiment with in-vessel coils for non-axisymmetric magnetic perturbations is now operational. First experiments have shown that ELM mitigation can be achieved using various perturbation field configurations with toroidal mode numbers n = 1, 2, 4. The main access criteria is the plasma edge pedestal density to exceed a threshold, which takes the lowest value of about 60% of the Greenwald density for resonant |n| = 1 perturbations. In H-mode plasmas, mode locking or error field-induced magnetic islands are generally not observed. Due to the low local shear of the plasma magnetic field in the vicinity of the perturbation coils around the outboard midplane, the magnetic perturbation is resonant simultaneously on several rational surfaces. It is hypothesised that the existence of image currents on these surfaces ensures good shielding of the error field in the confined plasma.

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► ELM mitigation is observed with n = 1, n = 2 and n = 4 perturbations.
► For n = 1 and n = 2, both field aligned (resonant) and non-aligned (non-resonant) perturbations are efficient.
► Main access criteria for ELM mitigation is a minimum edge density Greenwald fraction of 0.6 (n = 1) and 0.65 (n = 2).