Contribution of the Hall effect to radial electric field and spontaneous/intrinsic rotation in tokamak core plasmas

Abstract

The Hall effect, defined as the separation of electric charges of opposite sign when they move in a magnetic field, is suggested to contribute substantially to the observed negative radial electric field Er in the core plasma in tokamaks and, respectively, to the spontaneous/intrinsic rotation of plasma. A simple way to evaluate the Hall effect contribution to the Er value, using the independently measured space distributions of magnetic field and plasma rotation velocity, is suggested. The estimates of the effect for experimental data from the TM-4 and T-10 tokamaks suggest that the above phenomena in tokamaks should be described in the framework of the two-fluid magnetohydrodynamics.