Related papers: New linear stability parameter to describe low-$\b…
Electron current layers, which form in various natural and laboratory plasmas, are susceptible to multiple instabilities, with tearing being a prominent instability driven by current gradients. Tearing is considered a potential mechanism…
An analytic equilibrium, the Toroidal Bessel Function Model, is used in conjunction with the gyrokinetic code GYRO to investigate the nature of microinstabilities in a reversed field pinch (RFP) plasma. The effect of the normalized electron…
The nonlinear state of a high-beta collisionless plasma is investigated when an imposed linear shear amplifies or diminishes a uniform magnetic field, driving pressure anisotropies and hence firehose/mirror instabilities. The evolution of…
Future nuclear fusion reactors will have to confine plasma with strong kinetic gradients and small fractions of fusion-born energetic particles (EP) that are ~100 times hotter than the thermal ions. In our analysis, we assume the existence…
Electron temperature anisotropies and electron beams are nonthermal features of the observed nonequilibrium electron velocity distributions in the solar wind. In collision-poor plasmas these nonequilibrium distributions are expected to be…
Turbulent transport remains one of the principal obstacles to achieving efficient magnetic confinement in fusion devices. Two of the dominant drivers of the turbulence are microscale instabilities fuelled by electron- and ion-temperature…
This paper presents numerical linear stability analysis of a cylindrical Taylor-Couette flow of liquid metal carrying axial electric current in a generally helical external magnetic field. Axially symmetric disturbances are considered in…
A minimal model for magnetic reconnection and, generally, low-frequency dynamics in low-beta plasmas is proposed. The model combines analytical and computational simplicity with physical realizability: it is a rigorous limit of gyrokinetics…
Microinstabilities drive turbulent fluctuations in inhomogeneous, magnetized plasmas. In the context of magnetic confinement fusion devices, this leads to an enhanced transport of particles, momentum, and energy, thereby degrading…
It is known that magnetic perturbations can mitigate edge localized modes (ELMs) in experiments, for example MAST (Kirk et al 2013 Nucl. Fusion 53 043007). One hypothesis is that the magnetic perturbations cause a three dimensional…
Weakly collisional space plasmas are rarely in local thermal equilibrium and often exhibit non-Maxwellian electron and ion velocity distributions that lead to the growth of microinstabilities, that is, enhanced electric and magnetic fields…
A two-field gyrofluid model including ion finite Larmor radius (FLR) corrections, magnetic fluctuations along the ambient field and electron inertia is used to study two-dimensional reconnection in a low $\beta_e$ collisionless plasma, in a…
Plasma equilibria reconstructed from the Mega-Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) have sufficient resolution to capture plasma evolution during the short period between edge-localized modes (ELMs). Immediately after the ELM steep gradients in…
Weakly collisional plasmas dynamically develop pressure anisotropies with respect to the magnetic field. These anisotropies trigger plasma instabilities at scales just above the ion Larmor radius \rho_i and much below the mean free path…
We investigate electromagnetic buoyancy instabilities of the electron-ion plasma with the heat flux based on not the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations, but using the multicomponent plasma approach when the momentum equations are solved…
Plasmoid-driven magnetic reconnection in elongated current sheets is suspected to be an ubiquitous phenomenon in space and astrophysical plasmas, but the mechanisms driving its onset and dynamics are still debated. Deciphering the physical…
In this study, global nonlinear electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulations are conducted to investigate turbulence in the Internal transport barrier (ITB) region of the EAST tokamak discharge with weakly reversed magnetic shear. Linear…
Relative drifts between different species or particle populations are characteristic to solar plasma outflows, e.g., in the fast streams of the solar winds, coronal mass ejections and interplanetary shocks. This paper characterizes the…
In a toroidal plasma confined by a purely toroidal magnetic field the plasma transport is governed by electrostatic turbulence driven by the flute interchange instability on the low-field side of the torus cross section. In this paper we…
We report on the first experimental observation of a current-driven instability developing in a quasi-neutral matter-antimatter beam. Strong magnetic fields ($\geq$ 1 T) are measured, via means of a proton radiography technique, after the…