Recent Development of LHD Experiment

Experiments in LHD have been developing steadily since the first plasma in 1998. Many encouraging physical achievements have emerged during five experimental campaigns. The most significant finding is that MHD stability and good transport are compatible in the inward shifted configuration. Within the range of beta up to 3Vo and the collisionality down to 0.05, the energy confinement keeps gyro-Bohm characteristics, and no significant degradation due to the neoclassical transport and MHD instabilities have not been observed. The present 5th experimental campaign with upgraded heating resources has realized the electron temperature exceeding 10 keV which shows a sign of an internal transport barrier and the ion temperature of 5 keV. Technology of large scale superconducting system has been demonstrated successfully.