Transient growth of a Vlasov plasma in a weakly inhomogeneous magnetic field
Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Fluid and Plasma Simulation Group (FPS)Mechanical Engineering Program
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Date
2016-12-17Online Publication Date
2016-12-17Print Publication Date
2016-12Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/622672
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
We investigate the stability properties of a collisionless Vlasov plasma in a weakly inhomogeneous magnetic field using non-modal stability analysis. This is an important topic in a physics of tokamak plasma rich in various types of instabilities. We consider a thin tokamak plasma in a Maxwellian equilibrium, subjected to a small arbitrary perturbation. Within the framework of kinetic theory, we demonstrate the emergence of short time scale algebraic instabilities evolving in a stable magnetized plasma. We show that the linearized governing operator (Vlasov operator) is non-normal leading to the transient growth of the perturbations on the time scale of several plasma periods that is subsequently followed by Landau damping. We calculate the first-order distribution function and the electric field and study the dependence of the transient growth characteristics on the magnetic field strength and perturbation parameters of the system. We compare our results with uniformly magnetized plasma and field-free Vlasov plasma.Citation
Ratushnaya V, Samtaney R (2016) Transient growth of a Vlasov plasma in a weakly inhomogeneous magnetic field. Physics of Plasmas 23: 122116. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4972083.Sponsors
King Abdullah University of Science and TechnologyPublisher
AIP PublishingJournal
Physics of PlasmasAdditional Links
http://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4972083ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1063/1.4972083