We study the effects of resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) on turbulence, flows and confinement in the framework of resistive drift-wave turbulence. This work was motivated, in parts, by experiments reported at the IAEA 2010 conference (Xu et al 2011 Nucl. Fusion51 062030) which showed a decrease of long-range correlations during the application of RMPs. We derive and apply a zero-dimensional predator–prey model coupling the drift-wave–zonal-mode system (Leconte and Diamond 2012 Phys. Plasmas19 055903) to the evolution of mean quantities. This model has both density-gradient drive and RMP amplitude as control parameters and predicts a novel type of transport bifurcation in the presence of RMPs. This model allows a description of the full L–H transition evolution with RMPs, including the mean sheared flow evolution. The key results are the following: (i) the L–I and I–H power thresholds both increase with RMP amplitude , the relative increase of the L–I threshold scales as , where ν* is edge collisionality and ρs is the sound gyroradius. (ii) RMPs are predicted to decrease the hysteresis between the forward and back-transition. (iii) Taking into account the mean density evolution, the density profile—sustained by the particle source—has an increased turbulent diffusion compared with the reference case without RMPs which provides one possible explanation for the density pump-out effect.
L–H transition trigger physics in ITER-similar plasmas with applied n = 3 magnetic perturbations