title: New interpretation of alpha-particle-driven instabilities in deuterium-tritium experiments on the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor.
abstract: The original description of alpha particle driven instabilities in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor in terms of toroidal Alfvén 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.
authors.affiliation: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey 08543-0451, USA.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nazikian
authors.forename: G J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Kramer
authors.forename: C Z
authors.initials: CZ
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: N N
authors.initials: NN
authors.lastname: Gorelenkov
authors.forename: H L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Berk
authors.forename: S E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Sharapov