Related papers: Inelastic collisions facilitating runaway electron…
Based on the analysis of data from the numerous dedicated experiments on plasma disruptions in the TEXTOR tokamak the mechanisms of the formation of runaway electron beams and their losses are proposed. The plasma disruption is caused by…
Steering tokamak plasmas is commonly viewed as a way to avoid disruptions and runaway electrons. Plasma steering sounds as safe as driving to work but will be shown to more closely resemble driving at high speed through a dense fog on an…
Runaways are suprathermal electrons having sufficiently high energy to be continuously accelerated up to tens of MeV by a driving electric field [1]. Highly energetic runaway electron (RE) beams capable of damaging the tokamak first wall…
The neoclassical polarization current, generated when a magnetic island propagates through a tokamak plasma, is believed to influence the initial stage of the neoclassical tearing mode evolution. Understanding the strength of its…
In the event of a tokamak disruption in a D-T plasma, fusion-born alpha particles take several milliseconds longer to thermalise than the background. As the damping rates drop drastically following the several orders of magnitudes drop of…
$\textit{Tokamak disruptions}$ can give rise to the $\textit{runaway phenomenon}$, which is typical in plasma physics and describes the almost unbound acceleration of electrons to relativistic velocities and can lead to the formation of a…
The effect of small deviations from a Maxwellian equilibrium on turbulent momentum transport in tokamak plasmas is considered. These non-Maxwellian features, arising from diamagnetic effects, introduce a strong dependence of the radial flux…
It is shown that avalanches of runaway electrons can arise in stellarators, even if there is no net toroidal current in the plasma or the magnetic-field coils, if the current in the latter varies rapidly enough, e.g. due to a superconductor…
Upon application of a sufficiently strong electric field, electrons break away from thermal equilibrium and approach relativistic speeds. These highly energetic runaway electrons (MeV) play a significant role in tokamak disruption physics,…
Activation/deactivation by inelastic collisions have been extensively studied at unimolecular reactions in gas phase where they are crucial for equilibration. As equilibration means an increase of entropy, the mechanism can also be…
For plasma velocity space instabilities driven by particle distributions significantly deviated from a Maxwellian, weak collisions can damp the instabilities by an amount that is significantly beyond the collisional rate itself. This is…
Disruptions in tokamak plasmas may lead to the generation of runaway electrons that have the potential to damage plasma-facing components. Improved understanding of the runaway generation process requires interpretative modelling of…
We present first principles simulations of the direct collisionless coupling of the free energy of fusion-born ions into electron current in a magnetically confined fusion plasma. These simulations demonstrate, for the first time, a key…
Ions accelerated by electric fields (so-called runaway ions) in plasmas may explain observations in solar flares and fusion experiments, however limitations of previous analytic work have prevented definite conclusions. In this work we…
The influence of collisions on the growth rate of trapped-electron modes (TEMs) in core plasmas is assessed through both analytical linear gyrokinetics and linear gyrokinetic simulations. Both methods are applied to the magnetic geometry of…
Avoidance of the harmful effects of runaway electrons (REs) in plasma-terminating disruptions is pivotal in the design of safety systems for magnetic fusion devices. Here, we describe a computationally efficient numerical tool, that allows…
The collision frequencies of electron-neutral-particle in the weakly ionized complex plasmas with the non-Maxwellian velocity distributions are studied. The average collision frequencies of electron-neutral-particle in the plasmas are…
The spatio-temporal evolution of the energetic particles in the transport time scale in tokamak plasmas is a key issue of the plasmas confinement, especially in burning plasmas. In order to include sources and sinks and collisional slowing…
The collision of two expanding plasma clouds is investigated, emphasizing instabilities and electron energization in the plasma mixing layer. This work is directly relevant to laboratory experiments with explosively-created laser or z-pinch…
The path of tokamak fusion and ITER is maintaining high-performance plasma to produce sufficient fusion power. This effort is hindered by the transient energy burst arising from the instabilities at the boundary of high-confinement plasmas.…