On an unconventional approach to the improvement of plasma confinement in tokamaks

A conceptual proposal has been suggested to improve the confinement of a turbulent plasma in tokamaks with the use of discharges with large safety factors $q_L$ at the plasma edge. A number of experiments that were performed with increased safety factors $q_L$ at tokamaks of different scales and indicated the improvement of the confinement of the plasma in such regimes have been analyzed. The computer simulation of the evolution of the turbulent plasma, including the transition from the ohmic stage to the stage of intense heating by the electron cyclotron resonance method, has been performed for three discharges with the plasma parameters characteristic of the T-10 tokamak and $q_L$ from 3 to 8.5. This simulation has confirmed that the confinement of the plasma can be improved and its parameters can be increased at large $q_L$ values.