Modeling and advances in the high bootstrap fraction regime on EAST towards the steady-state operation

Experimental and modeling investigations on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) show attractive confinement and stability properties in fully non-inductive, high poloidal beta plasmas. In the 2018 EAST experimental campaign, extended operation regimes of steady-state scenario were obtained (beta(P) similar to 1.9 & beta(N) similar to 1.5 & H-98y 2 similar to 1.3 of using only RF heating) with a high bootstrap current fraction (f(BS) similar to 47%) and n(e)/n(GW) similar to 70%. The confinement quality, H-98y2 similar to 1.3, is much better than standard H-mode, and stationary peaked electron temperature profiles and peaked current density profile when similar to 1 MW of ECH and similar to 2.6 MW of LHW are both deposited in the core region. The observed improvement in plasma confinement is much better (H-98y 2 similar to 1.3) when compared with the RF-dominant heating experiments in the EAST 2016-2017 experimental campaign (H-98y2 similar to 1.1). Integrated modeling prediction suggests that high electron density would increase the plasma performance and bootstrap current fraction, which is consistent with the general experimental trend. Linear analysis shows that the high-k (k(y) > 1) modes instability (ETG) is suppressed in the core region. Also, the Shafranov shift is shown to play a role in the suppression of the electron turbulent energy transport. Besides the modeling predictions, the validation of the predicted of the effect of ECH on the plasma confinement in recent experiments was done and the experimental results were consistent with the modeling results. The validation results also suggest that when ECH is deposited in the core region in the RF heating experiments, increasing the ECH heating power from 0.5 MW to 1.0 MW does make a small improvement in the bootstrap current fraction. The high bootstrap fraction scenario realized on EAST and the investigation to achieve higher-performance plasma would help expanding the operation regime on EAST.