Theory of weakly collisional modes in magnetically confined high temperature plasmas

Thesis/Dissertation · Sun Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1984

OSTI ID:5464237

Hahm, T S

Several aspects of the semi-collisional modes in magnetically confined high temperature plasmas were studied. Kinetic effects associated with finite ion Larmor radius (FLR), which can significantly modify the conventional resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) results, are studied analytically. First, in a sheared slab geometry, the effects of transition from the unmagnetized ion response in the resistive region to the magnetized ion response in the ideal MHD region as well as the effects of diamagnetic drift frequencies (omega.) are studied in detail. The resistive kinetic Alfven modes are found to be damped with the damping rates proportional to (log nu/sub ei/)/sup -1/ with the corresponding eigenfrequencies approaching a finite real value in the small resistivity limit. The drift-tearing modes are found to be predominantly electromagnetic and mainly governed by the electron parallel dynamics. The author also investigated FLR effects on the m = 1 resistive internal kink modes. For the resistive-g modes, finite-omega. effects reduce the growth rate considerably. However, FLR effects enhance the growth rate over the collisional value.

• Research Organization: Princeton Univ., NJ (USA)
• OSTI ID: 5464237
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
700105 -- Fusion Energy-- Plasma Research-- Plasma Kinetics-Theoretical-- (-1987)
700107* -- Fusion Energy-- Plasma Research-- Instabilities
ALFVEN WAVES
COLLISIONAL PLASMA
HOT PLASMA
HYDROMAGNETIC WAVES
INSTABILITY
KINK INSTABILITY
LARMOR RADIUS
PLASMA
PLASMA INSTABILITY
PLASMA MACROINSTABILITIES
TEARING INSTABILITY