L. Curchod

The unique flexibility of TCV in plasma shaping has been exploited to address different aspects of tokamak physics, for which the plasma shape may play a role. This paper summarizes the experiments undertaken in the TCV tokamak ("Tokamak à Configuration Variable") over the last decade essentially in stability and transport. This paper enables a comprehensive and integrated view of the

Scenarios with different electron cyclotron heating power profile distributions and widths were compared for the first time in experiments on the Tokamak `a Configuration Variable (TCV). The heating profile was changed from shot to shot over a wide range from localized on-axis, with normalized minor radius half-width at half maximum σ1/2 ∼ 0.1, up to a widely distributed heating power profile with σ1/2 ∼ 0.4 and finally to a profile peaked far off-axis. The global confinement, MHD activity, density, temperature and electron pressure profile evolution were compared. In particular, the energy confinement properties of discharges with localized on-axis heating and distributed on-axis heating were very similar, with degradation close to that predicted by the ITER L-mode scaling; in the case of off-axis heating, on the other hand, the confinement degradation was even stronger.