New tokamak plasma regime with stationary temperature oscillations

During noninductively driven discharges in the Tore Supra tokamak, steady sinusoidal oscillations of the central electron temperature, lasting as long as 2 min, have been observed for the first time. Having no helical structure, they cannot be ascribed to any known MHD instability. The most plausible explanation of this new phenomenon is that the plasma current density and the electron temperature evolve as a nonlinearly coupled predator-prey system. This interpretation is supported by the numerical solution of coupled resistive current diffusion and heat transport equations.