Low edge safety factor operation and passive disruption avoidance in current carrying plasmas by the addition of stellarator rotational transform

Low edge safety factor operation at a value less than two (q(a) = 1/t(tot)(a) < 2) is routine on the Compact Toroidal Hybrid device with the addition of sufficient external rotational transform. Presently, the operational space of this current carrying stellarator extends down to q(a) = 1.2 without significant n = 1 kink mode activity after the initial plasma current rise phase of the discharge. The disruption dynamics of these low edge safety factor plasmas depend upon the fraction of helical field rotational transform from external stellarator coils to that generated by the plasma current. We observe that with approximately 10% of the total rotational transform supplied by the stellarator coils, low edge q disruptions are passively suppressed and avoided even though q(a)< 2. When the plasma does disrupt, the instability precursors measured and implicated as the cause are internal tearing modes with poloidal, m, and toroidal, n, helical mode numbers of m/n = 3/2 and 4/3 observed on external magnetic sensors and m/n = 1/1 activity observed on core soft x-ray emissivity measurements. Even though the edge safety factor passes through and becomes much less than q(a)< 2, external n = 1 kink mode activity does not appear to play a significant role in the disruption phenomenology observed. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.