Loss-Cone Stabilization in Rotating Mirrors: Thresholds and Thermodynamics

Abstract

In the limit of sufficiently fast rotation, rotating mirror traps are known to be stable against the loss-cone modes associated with conventional (non-rotating) mirrors. This paper calculates how quickly a mirror configuration must rotate in order for several of these modes to be stabilized (in particular, the high-frequency convective loss cone, drift cyclotron loss cone, and Dory-Guest-Harris modes). Commonalities in the stabilization conditions for these modes then motivate a modified formulation of the Gardner free energy and diffusively accessible free energy to be used for systems in which the important modes have wave vectors that are orthogonal or nearly orthogonal to the magnetic field, as well as a modification to include the effects of a loss region in phase space.

26 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Available energy and ground states of collisionless plasmas
• Suppression of Bremsstrahlung losses from relativistic plasma with energy cutoff
• Magnetostatic Ponderomotive Potential in Rotating Plasma
• Minimum Stabilizing Energy Release for Mixing Processes