Neoclassical Tearing Mode Locking Avoidance by 3D Fields and Recovery of High Confinement

A slowly rotating n=1 helical magnetic field has been applied for Neoclassical Tearing Mode (NTM) locking avoidance in the DIII-D tokamak. This 3D field applied through feedback recovered a high performance configuration by rebuilding a H-mode edge and high ion temperature internal transport barrier in the plasma core, although, at present, the $\beta_n$ was reduced by 30$\%$. The m/n=2/1 component of 3D field served to avoid NTM locking, while the m/n=1 and the m/n=(4-5)/1 components recover core confinement and H-mode edge. Preliminary analysis shows a quasi-steady helical plasma flow was built up around the core, mostly parallel to the equilibrium magnetic field. The optimization of m-components with n=1 is a promising approach for integrating optimizations of MHD stability from core to edge.