Dissipative nonlinear structures in tokamak plasmas

A lot of different kinds of instabilities may be developed in high temperature plasma located in a strong toroidal magnetic field (tokamak plasma). Nonlinear effects in the instability development result in plasma self-organization. Such plasma has a geometrically complicated configuration, consisting of the magnetic surfaces imbedded into each other and split into islands with various characteristic numbers of helical twisting. The self-consistency of the processes means that the transport coefficients in plasma do not depend just on the local parameters, being a function of the whole plasma configuration and of the forces affecting it. By disrupting the bonds between separate magnetic surfaces filled with islands, one can produce zones of reduced transport in the plasma, i.e. “internal thermal barriers”, allowing one essentially to increase the plasma temperature and density.