Drift-cyclotron loss-cone instability in 3-D simulations of a sloshing-ion simple mirror

Tran, Aaron; Frank, Samuel J.; Le, Ari Yitzchak; Stanier, Adam John; Wetherton, Blake Alastair; Egedal, Jan; Endrizzi, Douglass A.; Harvey, Robert W.; Petrov, Yuri V.; Qian, Tony M.; Sanwalka, Kunal; Viola, Jesse; Forest, Cary B.; Zweibel, Ellen G.

doi:10.1017/S0022377825000480

Drift-cyclotron loss-cone instability in 3-D simulations of a sloshing-ion simple mirror

Journal Article · Tue Jun 03 00:00:00 EDT 2025 · Journal of Plasma Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022377825000480· OSTI ID:2575602

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Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
Realta Fusion, Madison, WI (United States)
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
CompX, Del Mar, CA (United States)
Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States); Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States); Realta Fusion, Madison, WI (United States)

The kinetic stability of collisionless, sloshing beam-ion (45° pitch angle) plasma is studied in a three-dimensional (3-D) simple magnetic mirror, mimicking the Wisconsin high-temperature superconductor axisymmetric mirror experiment. The collisional Fokker–Planck code CQL3D-m provides a slowing-down beam-ion distribution to initialize the kinetic-ion/fluid-electron code Hybrid-VPIC, which then simulates free plasma decay without external heating or fuelling. Over 1 – 10 μs, drift-cyclotron loss-cone (DCLC) modes grow and saturate in amplitude. The DCLC scatters ions to a marginally stable distribution with gas-dynamic rather than classical-mirror confinement. Sloshing ions can trap cool (low-energy) ions in an electrostatic potential well to stabilize DCLC, but DCLC itself does not scatter sloshing beam-ions into the said well. Instead, cool ions must come from external sources such as charge-exchange collisions with a low-density neutral population. Manually adding cool ∼1keV ions improves beam-ion confinement several-fold in Hybrid-VPIC simulations, which qualitatively corroborates prior measurements from real mirror devices with sloshing ions.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC); National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Scientific User Facilities (SUF); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES)

Grant/Contract Number:: 89233218CNA000001; AC02-09CH11466; AR0001258; SC0014664

OSTI ID:: 2575602

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 2586629

Report Number(s):: LA-UR--25-20613; LA24C10898000000; 1469-7807; 10.1017/S0022377825000480

Journal Information:: Journal of Plasma Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Plasma Physics Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 91; ISSN 0022-3778; ISSN 1469-7807

Publisher:: Cambridge University PressCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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