Neoclassical toroidal viscosity and error-field penetration in tokamaks

A model for field error penetration is developed that includes nonresonant as well as the usual resonant field error effects. The nonresonant components cause a neoclassical toroidal viscous torque that tries to keep the plasma rotating at a rate comparable to the ion diamagnetic frequency. The new theory is used to examine resonant error-field penetration threshold scaling in ohmic tokamak plasmas. Compared to previous theoretical results, the plasma is found to be less susceptible to error-field penetration and locking, by a factor that depends on the nonresonant error-field amplitude. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.