Gyrokinetic verification of the persistence of kinetic ballooning modes in the magnetohydrodynamic second stability regime
- Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5E2 (Canada)
The kinetic ballooning mode (KBM) has been shown in previous work to be unstable within the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) region (in s-{alpha} space) of second stability [Hirose et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 72, 3993 (2004)]. In this work we verify this result using the gyrokinetic code GS2 [Kotschenreuther et al., Comput. Phys. Commun. 88, 128 (1996)] treating both ions and electrons as kinetic species and retaining the magnetosonic perturbation B{sub parallel}. Growth rates calculated using GS2 differ significantly from the previous differential/shooting code analysis. Calculations without B{sub parallel} find the stability region is preserved, while the addition of B{sub parallel} causes the mode to be more unstable than previously calculated within the region of MHD second stability. The inclusion of parallel ion current and B{sub parallel} into the shooting code does not account for the GS2 results. The evidence presented in this paper leads us to the conclusion that the adiabatic electron approximation employed in previous studies is found to be unsuitable for this type of instability. Based on the findings of this work, the KBM becomes an interesting instability in the context of internal transport barriers, where {alpha} is often large and magnetic shear is small (positive or negative)
- OSTI ID:
- 21120488
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 15, Issue 8; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2967894; (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Effects of magnetosonic perturbations on electron temperature gradient driven modes and the stability of skin depth sized electron ballooning modes
Fully electromagnetic gyrokinetic eigenmode analysis of high-beta shaped plasmas