For centuries, there has been an increasing energy demand in the world. This trend will most likely proceed in the near future. At the same time it has become clear that the carbon dioxide emission, which arises from the consumption of fossil resources such as oil and coal, harms the global climate. Therefore it is wide consensus that energy production using fossil resources must be replaced by other technologies, which do not emit greenhouse gases or harm the environment in another way. Since most of the renewable energies, such as wind- and solar energy, are very volatile and there is not yet a sufficient storage technology in sight, it is important to find a new energy source which can carry the base load of the power supply system. One promising technology which might be able to meet these requirements is nuclear fusion.
Among the various fusion technologies, that are investigated all over the world, a very promising one is fusion using magnetic confinement. There are two basic set-ups for this
technology, the Tokamak, which will be introduced in sec. 2.2, and the Stellarator. The data considered in this thesis was obtained at ASDEX Upgrade, a fusion experiment
conducted by the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik (IPP) in Garching, Germany, which is a Tokamak set-up.
In fusion plasmas, a desirable regime of high confinement can occur if sufficient heating power is injected into the plasma. Since an improved confinement in fusion plasmas
can contribute to the realisation of a fusion reactor and enhance its possible efficiency, it is worthwhile trying to understand the physics behind this phenomenon. At the transition into this regime of high confinement, the so called I-phase, which is introduced in sec. 2.4, arises and shows characteristic oscillations of density, magnetic fields, turbulence levels and flow velocity in the plasma edge, which can be modelled by limit-cycle oscillations. It is believed that the comprehension of these limit-cycle oscillations (LCOs) will help to understand the transition into higher confinement regimes.
In this thesis, I will examine the frequency scaling of the LCOs in the I-phase and compare it to a fitted scaling proposed by G. Birkenmeier et al.. In order to do so, I
will consider various plasma parameters and configurations and make use of two different methods for the determination of the frequency (cf. sec. 3.1 and 3.2). It will turn out that
a slightly adapted scaling applies quite well for practically all of the investigated plasma types and configurations. The examined plasmas will encompass different isotopes such as Helium, Deuterium and Hydrogen, upper and lower single null configuration (cf. sec. 2.2), as well as transitions from high to low confinement (H-L transitions) and vice versa.
Apart from the frequency scaling of the LCOs, the heating power dependence of the occurrence of the I-phase will also be investigated. In addition, several further observations
will be discussed.
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For centuries, there has been an increasing energy demand in the world. This trend will most likely proceed in the near future. At the same time it has become clear that the carbon dioxide emission, which arises from the consumption of fossil resources such as oil and coal, harms the global climate. Therefore it is wide consensus that energy production using fossil resources must be replaced by other technologies, which do not emit greenhouse gases or harm the environment in another way. Since m...
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