Topological Arrest of Ballooning Modes in Non-Axisymmetric Plasmas
Plasma Physics
2026-05-21 v2
Abstract
Why do non-axisymmetric stellarators avoid ballooning crashes that afflict tokamaks? Three-dimensional geometry induces Anderson localization of ballooning modes, converting a global instability into a Ginzburg--Landau network of isolated wave packets. Global stability reduces to a percolation problem: below a critical threshold, instability is arrested; above it, a crash occurs. This explains benign stellarator saturation, predicts vulnerability in quasisymmetric designs, and introduces the critical threshold as a nonlinear stability metric for reactor optimization, pending experimental validation.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.07329,
title = {Topological Arrest of Ballooning Modes in Non-Axisymmetric Plasmas},
author = {Amitava Bhattacharjee},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.07329},
year = {2026}
}