Effect of externally applied resonant magnetic perturbations on resistive tearing modes

Static resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) generated by saddle coil current have been applied in J-TEXT tokamak experiments in order to study their effects on tearing mode instabilities. With increasing RMP amplitude in time during the discharge, the mode stabilization is first observed, but a large locked mode follows if the RMP amplitude is increased to a very large value, indicating that the RMP amplitude is important in determining the plasma response and the tearing mode behaviour. By careful adjustment of the RMP amplitude, the (partial) stabilization of the m/n = 2/1 tearing mode by RMPs of moderate amplitude has been achieved without causing mode locking (m and n are the poloidal and toroidal mode numbers). To compare with experimental results, nonlinear numerical modelling based on reduced MHD equations has been carried out. With experimental parameters as input, both the mode locking and mode stabilization by RMPs are also obtained from numerical modelling. Further calculations have been carried out to study the plasma parameters affecting the mode stabilization by RMPs, including the plasma rotation frequency, viscosity, Alfvén velocity and the RMP amplitude. It is found that the suppression of the tearing mode by RMPs of moderate amplitude is possible for a sufficiently high ratio of plasma rotation velocity to the Alfvén speed. A larger plasma viscosity enhances the mode stabilization. (paper)