Experimental Study of Reversed Shear Alfven Eigenmodes During The Current Ramp In The Alcator C-Mod Tokamak

Experiments conducted in the Alcator C-Mod tokamak at MIT have explored the physics of reversed shear Alfven eigenmodes (RSAEs) during the current ramp. The frequency evolution of the RSAEs throughout the current ramp provides a constraint on the evolution of qmin, a result which is important in transport modeling and for comparison with other diagnostics which directly measure the magnetic field line structure. Additionally, a scaling of the RSAE minimum frequency with the sound speed is used to derive a measure of the adiabatic index, a measure of the plasma compressibility. This scaling bounds the adiabatic index at 1.40 ± 0.15 used in MHD models and supports the kinetic calculation of separate electron and ion compressibilities with an ion adiabatic index close to 7/4.