Transitionless enhanced confinement and the role of radial electric field shear

Evidence is presented for the role of radial electric field shear in enhanced confinement regimes attained without sharp bifurcations or transitions. Temperature scans at constant density, created in the reheat phase following deuterium pellet injection into supershot plasmas in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor [J. D. Strachan, , Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 1004 (1987)] are simulated using a physics-based transport model. The slow reheat of the ion temperature profile, during which the temperature nearly doubles, is not explained by relatively comprehensive models of transport due to Ion Temperature Gradient Driven Turbulence (ITGDT), which depends primarily on the (unchanging) electron density gradient. An extended model, including the suppression of toroidal ITGDT by self-consistent radial electric field shear, does reproduce the reheat phase. The extended reheat at constant density is observed in supershot but not L-Mode plasmas. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S1070-664X(00)01102-2].