The role of RF-induced E×B flows in the mitigation of scrape-off-layer convective transport during ion cyclotron resonance heating

While multiple experiments have reported a decrease in intermittent fluctuations in the far Scrape-Off-Layer (SOL) during ion cyclotron resonance heating (Antar et al 2010 Phys. Rev. Lett.105 165001, Li et al 2022 Nucl. Eng. Technol.54 207–19, Antar et al 2012 Nucl. Fusion52 103005), the physical mechanism behind this observation has not been fully established yet. In this work, we demonstrate, for the first time, a direct correlation between the amplitude of RF-induced E×B flows and turbulence suppression in the far SOL. Using the Gas Puff Imaging (GPI) diagnostic on Alcator C-Mod, we show again that Ion Cyclotron Range of Frequencies can significantly alter the flow in the SOL and introduce a shear layer in regions magnetically connected close to the antenna (Cziegler et al 2012 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion54 105019). With the 4-strap field-aligned antenna operated in dipole phasing, the ratio of the power coupled by the central two straps to the power coupled by the outer two straps was varied. The resulting RF-induced radial electric field magnitude thus varied, and we show that the impact on the far SOL turbulence correlates with the modified E×B velocity. We then apply a newly-developed blob tracking algorithm (Han et al 2022 Sci. Rep.12 18142) to higher-resolution GPI videos in order to directly observe the process of blob shearing by RF-induced E×B flows. We show that the radially sheared poloidal flows act as a transport barrier by stretching, stopping, and destroying filaments, which is consistent with the observed difference in turbulence statistics.