EFDA-JET-PR(12)38

MHD and Gyro-Kinetic Stability of JET Pedestals

The pedestal profile measurements in high triangularity JET plasmas show that with low fuelling the pedestal width decreases during the ELM cycle and with high fuelling it stays constant. In the low fuelling case the pedestal pressure gradient keeps increasing until the ELM crash and in the low fuelling case it reaches a saturation during the ELM cycle. An edge stability analysis using MHD and gyro-kinetic codes finds that at the end of the ELM cycle both JET plasmas become limited by finite-n peeling-ballooning modes and during the ELM cycle the steep pressure gradient region of the pedestal is both n = 1 ideal MHD ballooning mode and kinetic ballooning mode stable due to high bootstrap current. This indicates that during the ELM cycle the pedestal pressure gradient is not limited by kinetic ballooning modes. Any pedestal model based on pressure gradient being limited by kinetic ballooning modes needs to amended when predicting pedestals with high bootstrap current. Unstable micro-tearing modes are found at the JET pedestal top, but they are sub-dominant to ion temperature gradient modes. They are insensitive to collisionality and stabilised by increasing density gradient.
Name Size  
EFDP12038 3.95 Mb