LECTURES ON THE HYDROMAGNETIC STABILITY OF A CYLINDRICAL PLASMA. VIII. THE ROLE OF ANISOTROPIC PRESSURE IN THE THEORY OF THE STABILIZED PINCH
In the simple theory of the stabilized pinch it is assumed that the plasma has isotropic pressure. In practice this may well not be true and it is known that new instaibilities may arise when the pressure is anisotropic. In particular, in the simple theory, the uniform magnetic field in the plasma always exerts a stabilizing influence whereas plane waves propagating in a uoiform magnetic field may be unstable if the pressure is anisotropic. This lecture is divided into two main parts. In the first the qualitative effect of anisotropic pressure is demonstrated by supposing the plasma to be governed by the double adiabatic hydromagnetic equations of Chew, Goldberger, and Low. The se equations neglect heat flow along field lines and they underestimate the instability. In the second part a more accurate dispersion relation, given by Chandrasekhar, Kaufman, and Watson, is solved for several values of the ratio of parallel and perpendicular components of pressure. In this case both ion and electron distribution functions are assumed to be Gaussian in both parallel and perpendicular components of velocity and the ratio of parallel to perpendicular pressure is taken to be the same for each species. It is shown that the domain of instability increases if the ratio of pressures is either very large or very small but that the greatest stability occurs when the parallel pressure slightly exceeds the perpendicular pressure. (auth)
- Research Organization:
- United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. Research Group. Culham Labs., Culham, Oxfordshire, England
- NSA Number:
- NSA-15-031707
- OSTI ID:
- 4832940
- Report Number(s):
- CLM-L-2
- Country of Publication:
- Country unknown/Code not available
- Language:
- English
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