The recent achievement of high-density plasma confinement reaching 1.65 times the Greenwald limit on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) represents a significant engineering breakthrough in magnetic confinement fusion. The prevailing "Plasma-Wall Self-Organization (PWSO)" theory provides only a phenomenological description of this phenomenon without revealing the first-principles physical mechanism underlying the density limit.
Based on the fundamental principles of magnetic surface topology and plasma self-consistent confinement, this paper proposes a rational surface edge confinement enhancement layer mechanism, explaining the counterintuitive phenomenon of stepwise density increase under ECRH-assisted heating and presenting quantifiable predictions amenable to experimental verification. The analysis reveals that the step height of density increase exhibits an integer ratio relationship with the rational surface mode number m (i.e., Δn/nG ∝1/m), serving as a characteristic fingerprint distinguishing the topological mechanism from mere data noise.
Furthermore, this paper explores the physical limits and engineering challenges of the traditional "externally imposed rigid confinement" pathway for tokamaks, offering predictions regarding its inevitable scaling trends toward larger scales and fortress-like complexity. It also highlights alternative compact non-tokamak approaches as a complementary pathway worthy of attention.
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