Title: Plasma Instability
1Plasma Instability
Types of instabilities MHD-Instabilities Resis
tive Instabilities Drift-instabilities
2Plasma Instabilities
Interchange instability Sausage instability Kink
instability
3Plasma StabilityIdeal MHD
Momentum Balance Ohms Law Continuity Adiabat
ic Law Amperes Law
4Plasma StabilityLinearisation
Neglect of quadratic terms
Result One equation for dV
5Energy Principle
The operator F is self-adjoint
Sufficient condition for stability
6Energy Principle
Stabilising term
Explicit form of the perturbed energy
Destabilising term
A currentless (homogeneous) plasma is stable
7Energy Principle
Destabilising term (Bernstein)
Torsion of field line
Normal to mag.surf.
Curvature of field line
Angle between k and n
Destabilising term (Greene)
Local shear
8Plasma Stability
Convex curvature (unstable)
Concave curvature(stable)
Plasma
Plasma
9Ballooning Mode Instability
Equation for marginal stability ---gt threshold
of pressure gradient
field line bending term
destabilizing term
Integrated local shear
10Normal Curvature W 7X
Torus inside view
Favourable curvature
Unfavourable curvature
11Summary
MHD-instabilities in Helias configurations have
been analysed numerically Interchange modes are
stabilised by a magnetic well Ballooning modes
are the most unstable modes The critical
averaged beta in Helias configurations is in the
range of 4 to 6