Related papers: Upper bounds on gyrokinetic instabilities
Upper bounds on the growth of free energy in gyrokinetics are derived. These bounds apply to all local gyrokinetic instabilities in the geometry of a flux tube, i.e. a slender volume of plasma aligned with the magnetic field, regardless of…
Free energy, widely used as a measure of turbulence intensity in weakly collisional plasmas, has been recently found to be a suitable basis to describe both linear and nonlinear growth in a wide class gyrokinetic systems. The simplicity…
We introduce modes of instantaneous optimal growth of free energy for the fully electromagnetic gyrokinetic equations. We demonstrate how these "optimal modes" arise naturally from the free energy balance equation, allowing its convenient…
Bounding energetic growth of gyrokinetic instabilities is a complementary approach to linear instability analyses involving normal eigenmodes. Previous work has focused on upper bounds which are valid linearly and nonlinearly. However, if…
The linear gyrokinetic stability properties of magnetically confined electron-positron plasmas are investigated in the parameter regime most likely to be relevant for the first laboratory experiments involving such plasmas, where the…
The linear and nonlinear evolution of magnetic reconnection in collisionless high-temperature plasmas with a strong guide field is analyzed on the basis of a two-dimensional gyrofluid model. The linear growth rate of the reconnecting…
Upper bounds on the growth of instabilities in gyrokinetic systems have recently been derived by considering the optimal perturbations that maximise the growth of a chosen energy norm. This technique has previously been applied to…
The free energy balance equation for gyrokinetic fluctuations is derived and applied to instabilities. An additional term due to electromagnetic sources is included. This can provide a simpler way to compute the free energy balance in…
The non-linear Hall term present in the induction equation in the electron-magneto-hydrodynamics limit is responsible for the Hall drift of the magnetic field and, in some cases, for the so-called Hall instability. We investigate whether or…
We study the linear stability of weakly magnetized differentially rotating plasmas in both collisionless kinetic theory and Braginskii's theory of collisional, magnetized plasmas. We focus on the very weakly magnetized limit that is…
In order to understand the conditions which lead a highly magnetized, relativistic plasma to become unstable, and in such cases how the plasma evolves, we study a prototypical class of magnetostatic equilibria where the magnetic field…
Curvature-driven instabilities are ubiquitous in magnetised fusion plasmas. By analysing the conservation laws of the gyrokinetic system of equations, we demonstrate that the well-known spatial localisation of these instabilities to regions…
For a magnetised plasma in a straight magnetic guide field, we derive a set of four-dimensional kinetic equations, which can capture electromagnetic turbulence in the drift kinetic limit. To do so, we start from the gyrokinetic equations,…
The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in an ionized plasma is considered with a focus on the generation of magnetic field via the Biermann battery mechanisms. The problem is studied through direct numerical simulations of two counter-directed…
The onset and evolution of magnetic fields in laboratory and astrophysical plasmas is determined by several mechanisms, including instabilities, dynamo effects and ultra-high energy particle flows through gas, plasma and interstellar-media.…
Accurate modeling of core instabilities in tokamak plasmas is essential to understand the underlying physical mechanisms and their impact on plasma confinement. The ideal stability of the internal kink mode and the m = 1 collisionless…
We investigate the linear tearing instability in weakly collisional plasmas using a non-ideal gyrotropic-MHD framework, uncovering a previously unknown scaling relation for the instability growth rate in high-$\beta$ environments. Even…
We consider the linear axisymmetric stability of a differentially rotating collisionless plasma in the presence of a weak magnetic field; we restrict our analysis to wavelengths much larger than the proton Larmor radius. This is the kinetic…
We show that under very general conditions, cluster plasmas threaded by weak magnetic fields are subject to very fast growing plasma instabilities driven by the anisotropy of the plasma pressure (viscous stress) with respect to the local…
We analyze the equations of relativistic magnetized plasma dynamics in the limiting case that electromagnetic stress-energy is dominant over pressure and rest mass energy density. The naive formulation of these equations is shown to be not…