Recent Progress in RFP Research on the RFX Experiment

This paper presents an overview of recent experimental results obtained on the RFX device. We succeeded in obtaining and study RFP plasma with a plasma current up to 1 MA with negligible radiation losses and low effective charge. The local power and particle balance shows that in standard operation the plasma core is dominated by magnetic turbulence and that the global confinement is mainly provided by the edge region where a strongly sheared radial electric field is present. With poloidal current drive the amplitude of magnetic fluctuation and the thermal conductivity of the plasma core are reduced leading to improved confinement. Reduced heat transport is also observed when the width of the n spectrum of magnetic fluctuations is reduced.