C.G. Gimblett R.J. Hastie
An investigation is presented of the effect of an error field on the growth of a resistive wall mode (RWM). This issue is of importance to many toroidal confinement devices, but particularly to the proposed International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) [ITER Physics Basis, Nucl. Fusion 39 , 2175 (1999)], where if advanced tokamak performa…
PublishedN. J. Sircombe T. D. Arber R. O. Dendy
Direct numerical simulations of electron dynamics in externally driven electrostatic waves have been carried out using a relativistic two-fluid one-dimensional Vlasov–Poisson code. When the driver wave has sufficiently large amplitude, ion density holes ( cavitons ) form. The interaction between these cavitons and other incoming Langmuir waves gi…
PublishedThawatchai Onjun Arnold H. Kritz Glenn Bateman Vassili Parail Howard R. Wilson Alex Dnestrovskij
The time evolution of edge localized modes ( ELMs ) in the Joint European Torus tokamak [ P. H. Rebut and et al. , Nucl. Fusion 25 , 1011 ( 1985 )] is investigated using the JETTO predictive modeling code [ M. Erba and et al. , Plasma Phys. Controlled Fusion 39 , 261 ( 1997 )] . It is found that both pressure-driven ballooning and current-driven pe…
PublishedS.E. Sharapov A.B. Mikhailovskii G.T.A. Huysmans
The effects of nonresonating hot ions on the spectrum of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves and instabilities in tokamaks are studied in the limit when the width of the hot ion drift orbits is much larger than the radial scale length of the MHD perturbations. Due to the large magnetic drift velocities the hot ions cannot contribute to the MHD perturb…
PublishedR. E. Lee S. C. Chapman R. O. Dendy
The identification of preacceleration mechanisms for cosmic ray ions in supernova remnant shocks is an important problem in astrophysics. Recent particle-in-cell ( PIC ) shock simulations have shown that inclusion of the full electron kinetics yields non-time-stationary solutions, in contrast to previous hybrid ( kinetic ions, fluid electrons ) sim…
PublishedA.J. Webster H.R. Wilson A.M.M. Scaife
A tokamak’s economic performance is strongly affected by the plasma pressure that it may sustain, which in turn is limited by the maximum pressure gradients that may be supported. Ballooning modes are typically driven unstable by increasing the pressure gradient, and because they can radially extend across many rational surfaces, they can serious…
PublishedC. Courtois R.A.D. Grundy A.D. Ash D.M. Chambers N.C. Woolsey R.O. Dendy K.G. McClements
Results from an experimental study of the collisionless interaction of two laser-produced plasmas in a magnetic field with applications to supernova remnant shock physics are presented. The dynamics of the two plasmas and their interaction are studied with and without magnetic field through spatially and temporally resolved measurements of the elec…
PublishedN.C. Woolsey A.D. Ash D.M. Chambers C. Courtois R.O. Dendy R.A.D. Grundy K.G. McClements
Laboratory astro-plasma physics experiments are being designed to advance both our astrophysics and plasma physics knowledge. With current laser technology, target design and diagnostics, it is now possible to reproduce and measure the conditions of temperature and pressure usually met in extreme stellar environments. Coupled with scaled plasma phy…
PublishedH.R.Wilson
Tearing modes often limit the performance of tokamak plasmas, because the magnetic islands which they generate lead to a loss of confinement, or even a disruption. A particularly dangerous instability is the neoclassical tearing mode, which can grow to a large amplitude because of the amplification effect that the bootstrap current has on an initia…
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