Onset of current-driven turbulence on application of a low toroidal electric field

The critical condition for current-driven instability excited in a turbulently-heated TRIAM-1 tokamak plasma is investigated experimentally. A resistive hump in the loop voltage, plasma density fluctuation and rapid increase in electron temperature in the skin layer are simultaneously observed when the electron drift velocity equals the critical drift velocity for low-frequency ion acoustic instability. (author)