Neutral beam excitation of Alfven continua in the madison symmetric torus reversed field pinch

Alfven continua and Alfven eigenmodes (AEs) have been generated for reversed-field pinch (RFP) plasma equilibria in Madison Symmetric Torus (MST). Data gathered from the extensive suite of diagnostics on MST was used to generate equilibria using MSTFIT and VMEC. Three dimensional equilibria for spontaneous helical states were generated using the equilibrium reconstruction code V3FIT. The reduced-MHD codes AE3D and STELLGAP were run on all generated equilibria to calculate the continua and AEs. All continuum solutions contain a toroidicity-induced Alfven gap at 200-400 kHz, within which AE solutions appear by coupling of m=0,1 at medium n. The first observation of beam-driven instabilities on the RFP was performed using MST magnetics during neutral beam injection (NBI). Spatially coherent bursts with n=5,m=1 were observed in plasmas with edge safety factor q_a=0. The bursts oscillate at 65 kHz, and reach maximum amplitude and decay away within 100 mus. These bursts persist for the duration of NBI. Secondary n=-1 and n=4 bursts are coupled in time, reaching maximum amplitude with 50 mus after the n=5 peak amplitude. While the n=5 bursts scale weakly with the electron density n_e and strongly with the beam velocity v_beam, the n=4 bursts scale with the Alfven speed v_A. The burst frequencies are well below those of the calculated AEs and the modes are driven even with v_ beam < v_A, suggesting that the bursting modes are EPMs exciting continuum resonances. Burst characteristics were examined in a variety of plasmas. In reversed plasmas, the temporally changing q profile changes the burst resonances, bringing n=6 into resonance halfway through the sawtooth cycle. The n=5 mode switches from its frequency in non-reversed plasmas to a higher frequency at the end of the sawtooth cycle. In deeply reversed plasmas, the bursts are weaker and display chirping behavior as the plasma reversal increases. During the transition to a helical state, the bursts increase in frequency as q on-axis changes, altering the parallel wavenumber k_||. When the helical state is established, the bursts terminate.