IOP Publishing, Nuclear Fusion, 10(55), p. 104012
DOI: 10.1088/0029-5515/55/10/104012
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25th Fusion Energy Conference (FEC), Govt Russian Federat, St ă Petersburg, RUSSIA, OCT 13-18, 2014 ; International audience ; The RFX-mod device is operated both as a reversed field pinch (RFP), ă where advanced regimes featuring helical shape develop, and as a ă tokamak. Due to its flexibility, RFX-mod is contributing to the solution ă of key issues in the roadmap to ITER and DEMO, including MHD instability ă control, internal transport barriers, edge transport and turbulence, ă isotopic effect, high density limit and three-dimensional (3D) ă non-linear MHD modelling. This paper reports recent advancements in the ă understanding of the self-organized helical states, featuring a strong ă electron transport barrier, in the RFP configuration; the physical ă mechanism driving the residual transport at the barrier has been ă investigated. Following the first experiments with deuterium as the ă filling gas, new results concerning the isotope effect in the RFP are ă discussed. Studies on the high density limit show that in the RFP it is ă related to a toroidal particle accumulation due to the onset of a ă convective cell. In the tokamak configuration, q(a) regimes down to q(a) ă = 1.2 have been pioneered, with (2,1) tearing mode (TM) mitigated and ă (2,1) resistive wall mode (RWM) stabilized: the control of such modes ă can be obtained both by poloidal and radial sensors. Progress has been ă made in the avoidance of disruptions due to the (2,1) TM by applying ă q(a) control, and on the general issue of error field control. The ă effect of externally applied 3D fields on plasma flow and edge ă turbulence, sawtooth control and runaway electron decorrelation has been ă analysed. The experimental program is supported by substantial ă theoretical activity: 3D non-linear visco-resistive MHD and non-local ă transport modelling have been advanced; RWMs have been studied by a ă toroidal MHD kinetic hybrid stability code.