New interpretation of alpha-particle-driven instabilities in deuterium-tritium experiments on the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor

The original description of alpha particle driven instabilities in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor in terms of toroidal Alfven eigenmodes (TAEs) remained inconsistent with three fundamental characteristics of the observations: (i) the variation of the mode frequency with toroidal mode number, (ii) the chirping of the mode frequency for a given toroidal mode number, and (iii) the antiballooning density perturbation of the modes. It is now shown that these characteristics can be explained by observing that cylindrical-like modes can exist in the weak magnetic shear region of the plasma that then make a transition to TAEs as the central safety factor decreases in time.