Cross-field dynamics of the homogenization of the pellet deposited material in Tore Supra

For investigating the damping effect of low-order rational surfaces on the drift of pellet deposited plasmoids, a safety factor (q) profile scan experiment was performed in Tore Supra, on a series of discharges with identical temperature and density profiles. Fast time-resolved density measurements show that the position of the deposition peak does not move smoothly during the ablation/homogenization phase but changes step by step, each step being located close to an integer or half-integer q value. This behaviour is well reproduced by time-dependent simulations with the pellet ablation/deposition code HPI2, which takes into account the braking of the plasmoid drift by external currents flowing along field lines in the background plasma. The key feature of this damping mechanism is a modulation as a function of the local safety factor, the braking being more effective in the vicinity of simple rational q values. The overall agreement between measurements and code predictions for a significant range of edge safety factors is fully consistent with the fact that the limitation of the plasmoid polarization by parallel currents is the dominant damping process of the ∇B-induced drift in tokamaks.