Feedback control of multimode magnetohydrodynamic instabilities via neutral beams

In most scenarios of confinement degradation due to MHD (magnetohydrodynamic) fluctuations in both tokamaks and reversed field pinches several MHD modes are involved. This is the motivation for the development of a multimode feedback scheme in the present paper, in contrast to the past work. The scheme is based on modal (state) feedback, where each mode is unscrambled out of the sensor signal, which is a superposition of all mode information and then individually acted upon by a unique gain and phase. Finally, all these individually processed mode signals are electronically summed and impressed on the accelerator grid of a neutral beam as a single control signal. It is shown that this process can lead to the stabilization of all unstable modes without destabilization of any stable modes, in contrast to previous feedback experiments. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.