Plasma Response to Resonant Magnetic Perturbations in Large Aspect Ratio Tokamaks

In this paper, a plasma response model is investigated for large aspect ratio tokamaks, on the presence of external nonaxisymmetric resonant magnetic perturbations. To control plasma confinement, the plasma is perturbed by external resonant helical windings, similar to those introduced by an ergodic magnetic limiter. The plasma response to the perturbation is modeled as an additional magnetic perturbation, created by a current sheet on the main perturbed resonant surface, vanishing the radial component of the total magnetic field in the considered resonant surface. In order to show the influence of the plasma response on the field line topology, the field line differential equations are integrated numerically, showing the reduction of magnetic island sizes and the regularization of chaotic regions around the resonant surface where the response was introduced, in agreement with results observed in sophisticated simulation codes. Finally, the connection lengths indicate that, regarding their distribution, the plasma response introduces a homogenization effect which may affect the deposition patterns at the tokamak wall.