Kinetic Stability of the Field Reversed Configuration
Authors: E.V. Belova, R.C. Davidson, H. Ji, and M. Yamada
Date of PPPL Report: July 2002
Presented at: the 29th European Physical Society Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, June 17-21, 2002, in Montreux, Switzerland.
New computational results are presented which advance the understanding of the stability properties of the Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC). The FRC is an innovative confinement approach that offers a unique fusion reactor potential because of its compact and simple geometry, translation properties, and high plasma beta. One of the most important issues is FRC stability with respect to low-n (toroidal mode number) MHD modes. There is a clear discrepancy between the predictions of standard MHD theory that many modes should be unstable on the MHD time scale, and the observed macroscopic resilience of FRCs in experiments.