Dependence of plasma responses to an externally applied perturbation field on MHD oscillation frequency on the J-TEXT tokamak

The plasma response to externally applied perturbation fields is investigated on the J-TEXT tokamak using a set of static resonant magnetic perturbation (SRMP) coils. Several different experimental results are obtained including partial or complete suppression of the existing m/n = 2/1 tearing mode, mode locking or non-uniform magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) oscillations. These results depend sensitively on the tearing mode frequency and the amplitude of the perturbation field. It is found that mode locking is most likely to happen at a lower rotation frequency (< ∼5 kHz) and the threshold for mode locking has a linear relation with MHD frequency. However, complete suppression of the tearing mode happens in a region where the MHD frequencies are higher (∼6 kHz). The experimental observations are explained by numerical simulations based on reduced MHD equations. The error field contributes to an offset between the mode-locking thresholds for the two opposite spatial phases of the SRMP, through which the intrinsic error field of J-TEXT can be estimated.