Fishbone instability excited by energetic electrons during electron cyclotron resonant heating (ECRH) is identified on HL-2A. With high-power ECRH, periodic frequency jump phenomena are observed by soft x-ray arrays. Soft x-ray tomography shows that the poloidal and toroidal mode numbers are 1/1 and 2/2 with the frequency jump. There is an ECRH power threshold for the frequency jump phenomena, which is generally about 0.9 MW. The frequencies of the two modes increase with the ECRH power. Experiments show that trapped particles are dominant in the low-density high-power ECRH plasma. The precessional frequency of the energetic trapped electrons is calculated with different discharge parameters. The results indicate that the energy of resonant electrons is in agreement with the hard x-ray measurement.

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