Feedback control of edge turbulence in a tokamak

An experiment on feedback control of edge turbulence has been undertaken on the KT-5C tokamak. The results indicate that the edge turbulence could be suppressed or enhanced depending on the phase shift of the feedback network. In a typical case of 90° phase shift feedback, the turbulence amplitudes of both T-${\mathrm{tilde}}_{\mathrm{e}}$ and ${\mathrm{ñ}}_{\mathrm{e}}$ were reduced by about 25% when the gain of the feedback network was 15. Correspondingly the radial particle flux decreased to about 75% level of the background. Through bispectral analysis it is found that there exists a substantial nonlinear coupling between various modes comprised in edge turbulence, especially in the frequency range from about 10 kHz to 100 kHz, which contains the large part of the edge turbulence energy in KT-5C tokamak. In particular, by actively controlling the turbulence amplitude using feedback, a direct experimental evidence of the link between the nonlinear wave-wave coupling over the whole spectrum in turbulence, the saturated turbulence amplitude, and the radial particle flux was provided.