Preliminary investigations of equilibrium reconstruction quality during ELMy and ELM-free phases on JET

On JET, the magnetic topology is normally derived from the code EFIT, which solves the Grad–Shafranov equation with constraints imposed by the available measurements, typically the pick-up coils. Both the code and the measurements are expected to perform worse during ELMs. To assess this hypothesis, various statistical indicators, based on the values of the residuals and their probability distribution, have been calculated. They all show that the quality of EFIT reconstructions is clearly better in absence of ELMs. How the responsibility, for the lower quality of the reconstructions, is shared between the measurements and EFIT is a subject under investigation. © 2001 Elsevier Science. All rights reserved.