Off-axis rf-driven current can play a critical role in sustaining high spherical torus (ST) plasmas without a central solenoid. Numerical modeling of electron Bernstein wave current drive (EBWCD) for a ~ 40% ST plasma predicts efficient, off-axis, Ohkawa EBWCD. Current can be efficiently driven at r/a > 0.5 where the large trapped electron fraction precludes conventional Fisch-Boozer current drive and provides near-ideal conditions for Ohkawa EBWCD. Also, Ohkawa EBWCD efficiency increases with r/a.

The highly indented plasmas of the PBX-M tokamak experiment [Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion Research (IAEA, Vienna, 1989), Vol. 1, p. 97] have reached plasma regimes of both high volume-averaged beta (βt), and high-beta poloidal (βp), and show evidence of the suppression of external surface modes by the passive stabilizing system. Values of βt up to 4.0 I/aB (% MA/m T) with Ti(0)≊4 keV have been obtained. A magnetohydrodynamic analysis of plasmas with βp=2.0 indicates that these plasmas are near the threshold of the second stability regime. A value of βt of 6.8% has been reached with Ti(0)>5 keV and an indentation of 28%. Control of plasma shape is accomplished with a feedback system that uses a moment expansion about a single equilibrium and is augmented by time-dependent waveforms to redefine plasma shape. Diagnostics to measure the safety factor q have been developed and used to make accurate measurements of q(r) and to verify changes made in q(0).

A deuterium H-mode discharge with a plasma current of 300 kA, an axial toroidal magnetic field of 0.55 T, and a calculated non-inductive plasma current fraction of 0.7-1 has been generated in the National Spherical Torus Experiment by 1.4 MW of 30 MHz high-harmonic fast wave (HHFW) heating and current drive. Seventy-five percent of the non-inductive current was generated inside an internal transport barrier that formed at a normalized minor radius $0.4. Three quarters of the non-inductive current was bootstrap current, and the remaining non-inductive current was generated directly by HHFW power inside a normalized minor radius $0.2. V C 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.

High frequency pressure driven modes have been observed in high poloidal beta discharges in the Princeton Beta Experiment Modification (PBX-M). These modes are excited in a non-axisymmetric equilibrium characterized by a large, low frequency mt = 1/nt = 1 island, and they are capable of expelling fast ions. The modes reside on or very close to the q = 1 surface and have mode numbers with either mh = nh or (less probably) mh/nh = mh/(mh-1), with mh varying between 3 and 10. Occasionally these modes are simultaneously localized in the vicinity of the ml = 2/nl = 1 island. The high frequency modes near the q = 1 surface also exhibit a ballooning character, being significantly stronger on the large major radius side of the plasma. When a large mt = 1/nt = 1 island is present, the mode is poloidally localized in the immediate vicinity of the X point of the island. The modes occur exclusively in high beta beam heated discharges and are likely to be driven by the beam ions. They can thus be a manifestation of either a toroidicity induced shear Alfven eigenmode (TAE) at q = (2mh+1)/2nh, a kinetic ballooning mode, or some other type of pressure driven (high β) mode. Most of the data are consistent with the theoretical predictions for the TAE gap mode. Since the high frequency modes in PBX-M, however, are found exclusively on or in the immediate neighbourhood of magnetic surfaces with low rational numbers (q = 1, 2,...), other possibilities are not excluded