Toroidal mode number transition of the edge localized modes in the KSTAR plasmas

Rapid transitions of the toroidal mode number () have been often detected during the evolution of the edge localized modes (ELMs) in the inter-ELM-crash periods of the KSTAR tokamak plasmas. The mode number transitions accompany changes of the mode frequency () (e.g. changed from 8 to 5 while changed from ~32 to 9 kHz). The observed transition phenomena have been diverse including small and large increase (or decrease) in the mode number and multiple transitions during a single inter-ELM-crash period. Two classes of the mode transitions were identified: non-overlapping transition and overlapping transition. The former case is characterized by the absence of coherent filamentary structure during the transition and the latter case is characterized by co-existence of two coherent filamentary structures with different mode numbers. Each transition process typically lasts a few hundreds to thousands of μs.