J. H. E. Proll P. Helander J.W. Connor G. G. Plunk
It is shown that in perfectly quasi-isodynamic stellarators, trapped particles with a bounce frequency much higher than the frequency of the instability are stabilizing in the electrostatic and collisionless limit. The collisionless trapped-particle instability is therefore stable as well as the ordinary electron-densitygradient- driven trapped-ele…
PublishedJ W Connor R J Hastie P Helander
Tearing mode stability is normally analysed using MHD or two-fluid Braginskii plasma models. However for present, or future, large hot tokamaks like JET or ITER the collisionality is such as to place them in the banana regime. Here we develop a linear stability theory for the resonant layer physics appropriate to such a regime. The outcome is a set…
PublishedR. J. Mckay K. G. McClements A. Thyagaraja L. Fletcher Euratom/Ukaea
A full orbit test-particle approach is used to study the collisional transport of impurity (carbon) ions in spherical tokamak (ST) plasmas with transonic and subsonic toroidal flows. The efficacy of this approach is demonstrated by reproducing the results of classical transport theory in the large aspect ratio limit. The equilibrium parameters used…
PublishedP. Helander D. Grasso R. J. Hastie A. Perona
In tokamak disruptions the Ohmic current is often replaced by a current of runaway electrons, which is likely to be more peaked in the center of the discharge than the predisruption current. This raises the question of the resistive stability of the postdisruption plasma, where the equilibrium current is entirely carried by the runaway electrons wh…
PublishedC. G. Gimblett R. J. Hastie P. Helander
Edge-localized modes (ELMs) are cyclic disturbances in the outer region of tokamak plasmas that are influential in determining present and future tokamak performance. In this Letter, we outline an approach to modeling ELMs in which we envisage toroidal peeling modes initiating a Taylor relaxation [Phys. Rev. Lett. 33 , 1139 (1974)] of a tokamak out…
PublishedP. Helander T. Fülöp M. Lisak
It is shown that poloidally asymmetric particle transport or fueling in a tokamak generally produces an electric current parallel to the magnetic field, in particular if the transport or fueling is up-down asymmetric. For instance, a current arises in the edge region if most particle transport across the last closed flux surface occurs in the midpl…
PublishedH. Smith P. Helander L.-G. Eriksson D. Anderson M. Lisak F. Andersson
After the thermal quench of a tokamak disruption, the plasma current decays and is partly replaced by runaway electrons. A quantitative theory of this process is presented, where the evolution of the toroidal electric field and the plasma current is calculated self-consistently. In large tokamaks most runaways are produced by the secondary avalanch…
PublishedP. Sandquist S. E. Sharapov P. Helander M. Lisak
A corrected relativistic collision operator is used to derive a Fokker-Planck equation for the distribution function of relativistic suprathermal electrons in a weakly relativistic plasma, which is then solved by a procedure similar to that employed in Connor and Hastie [Nucl. Fusion 15 , 415 (1975)]. Analytical expressions are derived for the elec…
PublishedT. Fülöp G. Pokol P. Helander M. Lisak
Magnetosonic-whistler waves may be destabilized by runaway electrons both in fusion and astrophysical plasmas. A linear instability growth rate of these waves in the presence of a runaway avalanche is calculated both perturbatively and by numerical solution of the full dispersion equation. The local threshold of the instability depends on the fract…
PublishedS. Newton P. Helander
It is widely believed that transport barriers in tokamak plasmas are caused by radial electric-field shear, which is governed by angular momentum transport. Turbulence is suppressed in the barrier, and ion thermal transport is comparable to the neoclassical prediction, but experimentally angular momentum transport has remained anomalous. With this …
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