On the linear stability of collisionless microtearing modes

Abstract

Microtearing modes are an important drive of turbulent heat transport in present-day fusion plasmas. We investigate their linear stability under very-low collisionality regimes, expected for the next generations of devices, using gyrokinetic and drift-kinetic approaches. At odds with current opinion, we show that collisionless microtearing instabilities may occur in certain experimental conditions, particularly relevant for such devices as reversed field pinches and spherical tokamaks.

5 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Physics of Plasmas

References in corpus (3)

• Kinetic instabilities that limit β in the edge of a tokamak plasma: a picture of an H-mode pedestal
• Micro-tearing modes in the Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak
• Microtearing Modes in Reversed Field Pinch Plasmas

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Microtearing modes as the source of magnetic fluctuations in the JET pedestal
• Kinetic microtearing modes and reconnecting modes in strongly magnetised slab plasmas
• Linear gyrokinetic stability of a high $\beta$ non-inductive spherical tokamak
• Electromagnetic instabilities and plasma turbulence driven by electron-temperature gradient
• New linear stability parameter to describe low-$\beta$ electromagnetic microinstabilities driven by passing electrons in axisymmetric toroidal geometry
• The physics of a small-scale tearing mode in collisionless slab plasmas
• Microtearing turbulence saturation via electron temperature flattening at low-order rational surfaces
• Destabilization mechanism of the collisional microtearing mode in magnetized slab plasmas