Helical core reconstruction of a DIII-D hybrid scenario tokamak dischargeaaNotice of Copyright This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or all

This paper presents the first fully 3-dimensional (3D) equilibrium reconstruction of a helical core in a tokamak device. Using a new parallel implementation of the Variational Moments Equilibrium Code (PARVMEC) coupled to V3FIT, 3D reconstructions can be performed at resolutions necessary to produce helical states in nominally axisymmetric tokamak equilibria. In a flux pumping experiment performed on DIII-D, an external n = 1 field was applied while a 3/2 neoclassical tearing mode was suppressed using ECCD. The externally applied field was rotated past a set of fixed diagnostics at a 20 Hz frequency. The modulation, observed to be strongest in the core SXR and MSE channels, indicates a localized rotating 3D structure locked in phase with the applied field. Signals from multiple time slices are converted to a virtual rotation of modeled diagnostics adding 3D signal information. Starting from an axisymmetric equilibrium reconstruction solution, the reconstructed broader current profile flattens the q-profile, resulting in an m = 1, n = 1 perturbation of the magnetic axis that is ∼50× larger than the applied n = 1 deformation of the edge. Error propagation confirms that the displacement of the axis is much larger than the uncertainty in the axis position validating the helical equilibrium.