Disruption caused by locked modes (LMs) is one of the most critical issues to be solved for tokamak fusion reactors. This paper aimed to understand the plasma response to external rotating resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs), which are applied at a few kilohertz for controlling the pre-existing LMs. In the J-TEXT tokamak, the plasma response to a rotating RMP showed a feature of travelling wave, if no tearing mode (TM) existed. With a LM, the application of a rotating RMP led to unique features of plasma responses, which could be roughly described by the formula δbθ(θ, t) = 2Asin(mθ − mθO)cos(2πfRRMPt), where δbθ, A, m, θO and fRRMP are the perturbed poloidal magnetic field, the amplitude, the poloidal mode number, the poloidal location of the TM's O-point and the frequency of the rotating RMP. These features are analogous to that of a standing wave in the TM rest frame, with the nodes locating at the O-/X- points. The perturbations of electron temperature, Te, due to plasma responses were zero or minimal inside the magnetic island or outside the magnetic island but at the same poloidal positions as the O-/X- points. Both δbθ and the Te perturbations increased linearly with the rotating RMP. A phenomenological model is proposed that the rotating RMP drives the phase oscillation of the TM by applying a periodical electromagnetic torque. Then the phase oscillation of TM, combined with the poloidal gradient of the plasma parameters, induces the plasma response measured experimentally. The nonlinear numerical modelling confirmed the forced phase oscillation of the TM, and qualitatively verified the amplitude and phase dependences among the plasma response, the phase oscillation of the TM and the rotating RMP, which have been predicted by the model.
Location of the first plasma response to resonant magnetic perturbations in DIII-D H-mode plasmas