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Linear gyrokinetics of electron–positron plasmas in closed field-line systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2020

D. Kennedy*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, D-17491Greifswald, Germany
A. Mishchenko
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, D-17491Greifswald, Germany
P. Xanthopoulos
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, D-17491Greifswald, Germany
P. Helander
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, D-17491Greifswald, Germany
A. Bañón Navarro
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, D-85748Garching, Germany
T. Görler
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, D-85748Garching, Germany
*
Email address for correspondence: daniel.kennedy@ipp.mpg.de
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Abstract

Linear gyrokinetic simulations of magnetically confined electron–positron plasmas are performed for the first time in the geometry and parameter regimes likely to be relevant for upcoming laboratory experiments. In such plasmas, the density will be sufficiently small as to render the plasma effectively collisionless. The magnetic field will be very large, meaning that the Debye length will exceed the gyroradius by a few orders of magnitude. We show the results of linear simulations in flux tubes close to the current carrying ring and also in the bulk of the plasma, demonstrating the existence of entropy modes and interchange modes in pair plasmas. We study linear stability and show that in the relevant configurations, almost complete linear stability is attainable in large swathes of parameter space.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Illustrative example of a single magnetic field line (a) and the variation of the magnetic field strength along the field line (b) for different values of the parameter $r_{c}$. As this parameter is varied we can change the flux tube from one resembling a Z-pinch geometry to one resembling a point-dipole limit.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Variation of the magnetic field strength (a) and the Jacobian (b) for the three different flux tubes. The magnetic field strength is normalised to the inboard midplane.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Variation of the magnetic field strength (a) and the Jacobian (b) for the three different flux tubes. The magnetic field strength is normalised to the outboard midplane.

Figure 3

Table 1. Parameters which must be supplied in order to construct the computational domain using the routines described in appendices A–B.

Figure 4

Figure 4. Growth rate $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}$ and real frequency $\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}$ plotted as a function of $k_{y}\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{i}$ for different flux tubes. Note the different ordinate scales due to the different length scales introduced by the choice of normalisation.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Stability diagram for several values of $k_{\bot }\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{D}$, (ac), computed by solving the dispersion relation (these figures are reproduced from Mishchenko et al. (2018a) with permission). Also shown are the stability diagrams for several values of $k_{\bot }\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{s}$, (df), this time calculated using GENE. Theoretical stability boundaries are also shown in each figure. The colour of the density plot corresponds to numerically obtained growth rate. The region of stability bordered by a solid black contour in each case. We note the outstanding agreement between the use of GENE and the previous results using the linear dispersion relation. In the second set of stability diagrams, $k_{\bot }\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{s}$ is playing the role of $k_{\bot }\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{D}$, which is set to zero in GENE. The theoretical stability lines (dashed red, and dashed green) correspond respectively to (6.3) and (6.4). Once again we note that that the deviation from the red theoretical stability boundary (which does not include finite-$k_{\bot }\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{s}$ corrections) decreases as $k_{\bot }^{2}\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{s}^{2}\rightarrow 0$, although surprisingly slowly. In the GENE simulations, the region of stability is white and is bordered by a solid black contour.

Figure 6

Figure 6. Stability diagram for several values of $k_{\bot }\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{s}$, for the Z-pinch (a,b) and for the dipole (c,d). The colour of the density plot corresponds to numerically obtained growth rate this time calculated using GENE simulations. The region of stability is white and bordered by a solid black contour.

Figure 7

Figure 7. Growth rate and frequency of the entropy mode as a function of $k_{y}\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{D}$ for a large Debye length plasma in the Z-pinch. Note that, in agreement with theoretical prediction, the instability is quashed for large values of the Debye length.

Figure 8

Figure 8. Stability diagram for several values of $k_{y}\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{D}$ for a large Debye length plasma in the Z-pinch. The colour of the density plot corresponds to numerically obtained growth rate this time calculated using GENE simulations. The region of stability is white and bordered by a solid black contour.