Neoclassical theory of poloidal and toroidal rotations

Neoclassical theory for poloidal and toroidal rotations in tokamak plasmas in the plateau and banana regions is derived. The authors found that the acceleration of poloidal rotation in the plateau region is faster than that in the Pfirsh-Schluter region (Stringer's Spin-up) by a factor of the order of (mi/me)1/2 due to the much larger contribution to the parallel force acting on the plasma by the resonant ions than that by electrons. This, however, does not lead to Stringer-Spin-up-type instability. Eventually a steady state radial electric field is established. Accompanying this very large acceleration of poloidal rotation in the plateau region, the authors propose a plausible explanation of the recent experimental observation of D III D plasma which shows that transition from L to H occurs when the edge ν*i is reduced to unity