Stable existence of central current hole in the JT-60U tokamak

In an extreme state of a reversed magnetic shear configuration, it was found in JT-60U that there is almost no plasma current in the central region (called Current Hole). The Current Hole region extends to 40% of the plasma minor radius and it exists stably for several seconds. The Current Hole is formed by the growth of the bootstrap current and it is impossible to drive current in either positive or negative direction by ECH or N-NB inside the Current Hole. In that region, there is almost no gradient of density, temperature and toroidal rotation velocity. It means that there is almost no confinement in the Current Hole and the large energy in that region is sustained only by an internal transport barrier (ITB). The effects of the Current Hole on particle orbits and the effects on an error field on the Current Hole are also discussed. (author)