In this paper, results of a direct comparison of TEXTOR and DIII-D experiments with resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) fields are presented. This comparison of resistive L-mode plasmas at TEXTOR with highly conductive H-mode plasmas at DIII-D is useful to identify generic physics mechanisms during application of RMP fields with a strong field line pitch angle alignment in the plasma edge.A reduction in the pedestal electron pressure pe with increasing extension of the vacuum modelled stochastic layer and pe recovery with decreasing layer width is found caused by a q95 resonant reduction in the edge (0.8 < ΨN < 0.95) electron temperature Te(q95) on both devices. For RMP edge-localized mode (ELM) suppressed H-mode plasmas at DIII-D, the gradients ∇Te and nominal values of Te are reduced in this edge region while increasing in the pedestal (0.95 < ΨN < 1.0) with RMP field applied and both are highly dependent on q95. In contrast, an increase in the central ion temperature with strong steepening of the ion temperature profile at mid-radius is found—again being highly dependent on q95. However, these resonant thermal transport effects are only seen in high triangularity plasmas revealing a strong shape dependence of the thermal transport. In contrast to the highly q95 dependent thermal transport features, the reduction of ne—known as density pump out—shows a much weaker dependence on q95. We show the potential to reduce the RMP induced particle pump out by fine tuning of the RMP spectral properties. At low resonant field amplitudes enhanced particle confinement is seen in high-field side limited L-mode discharges on both devices while higher resonant field amplitudes yield particle pumps out.
Location of the first plasma response to resonant magnetic perturbations in DIII-D H-mode plasmas