On lateral deflection of the SOL plasma in tokamaks during giant ELMs

In recent H-mode experiments at JET with giant ELMs a lateral deflection of hot tokamak plasma leaving the scrape-off layer and striking the divertor plate has been observed. This deflection can effect the divertor erosion caused by the hot plasma irradiation, because of enlarging the irradiated area. A simplified MHD model of the vapor shield plasma and of the hot plasma initially formed at time t → -∞ is analyzed. At t = -∞ both plasmas are assumed to stay on rest and to be separated by a boundary, which is parallel to the plate surface. The interaction between plasmas is assumed to develop gradually ('adiabatically') as exp(t/t0) with t0 ∝ 102 μs the ELM duration time. Electrical insulation of the core tokamak plasma is assumed everywhere except for the contact with the divertor. Electric currents are flowing only in the toroidal direction. These currents developing in the interaction zone of the hot plasma and the rather cold target plasma are calculated for inclined impact of the magnetized hot plasma. At such conditions the J x B force in the lateral direction accelerates the interacting plasmas. The motion of the cold plasma and the gradual increase of the plasma interaction intensity are shown to be important for the appropriate deflection magnitude. Adiabatically responding against the increase of the interaction intensity the cold plasma motion compensates significantly the currents thus decreasing the deflection compared to motionless approach. The calculated magnitude of the hot plasma deflection is comparable to the observed one. The results of the modeling are discussed in relation to the experiments. It is shown that sudden switching on of the interaction produces Alfven oscillations of large amplitudes causing much larger amplitudes of the magnetic field induced by the currents than in the adiabatic case. (orig.)