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The 2013 MAST physics campaign is underway, with excellent progress in the first week of operations.

First plasma operation

The MAST restart proved more problematic than expected, due to a number of technical problems resulting from an extensive power outage in 2012. First plasma operation was established on 15 April but a toroidal field system fault developed shortly afterwards. Vessel conditioning was resumed with beam-heated plasmas on 20 May and boronisation conducted on 22 May.

2013 experimental campaign

Several collaborators have recently visited MAST to help prepare for the 2013 campaign, from Europe, the United States and Japan.

During the first full week of operation, work has focused on:

• Tests of real time plasma shaping and control;
• Tests of a new vertical plasma position controller based on Field Programmable Gate Arrays;
• Plasma operating scenario development;
• Synthetic Aperture Microwave Imaging (SAMI) measurements in collaboration with the University of York;
• First measurements using a new "ball-pen" Langmuir probe, designed to measure the electric potential of the plasma directly;
• Plasma flow velocity measurements using a new "coherence imaging" system developed in collaboration with Durham University and the Australian National University. 
   

Overall aims of the campaign include:

• ELM control with 3D magnetic perturbations;
• Evolution and stability of the edge pedestal;
• Role of ion-scale turbulence in core transport;
• Development of integrated scenarios for MAST Upgrade;
• Development and benchmarking of edge modelling tools in benefit of the divertor upgrade;
• Fast-ion transport to guide profile and heating optimisations.

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