Observation of Multiple Reconnections during Self-organization Process of High Temperature Fusion Plasma

Images of a high resolution 2-D Electron Cyclotron Emission Imaging (ECEI) diagnostic shows evidence of multiple magnetic reconnection processes during the internal disruption of a high temperature tokamak plasmas. The disruption induces magnetic self-organization of the toroidal plasma being accompanied by successive or simultaneous multiple layer reconnection. The degree of asymmetric deformation of the internal magnetic structure (m/n=1/1 mode) prior to temperature crash influences the outcome of the disruptive behavior. The observation is critical for the building block of first principle theoretical modeling of the sawtooth oscillation in current driven toroidal plasmas and the understandings can be applied to the impulsive disruptive behavior in flares of the solar, accretion disk and stellar coronae, Earth magnetospheric storms, and controlled fusion.