Comparison of Theory with Rotation Measurements in JET ICRH Plasmas

Plasma rotation appears to improve plasma performance by increasing the E x B flow shearing rate, thus decreasing radial correlations in the microturbulence. Also, plasma rotation can increase the stability to resistive MHD modes. In the Joint European Torus (JET), toroidal rotation rates omega (subscript ''tor'') with high Mach numbers are generally measured in NBI-heated plasmas (since the neutral beams aim in the co-plasma current direction). They are considerably lower with only ICRH (and Ohmic) heating, but still surprisingly large considering that ICRH appears to inject relatively small amounts of angular momentum. Either the applied torques are larger than naively expected, or the anomalous transport of angular momentum is smaller than expected. Since ICRH is one of the main candidates for heating next-step tokamaks, and for creating burning plasmas in future tokamak reactors, this paper attempts to understand ICRH-induced plasma rotation