Macroscopic plasma oscillation bursts (fishbones) resulting from high-energy populations

Abstract

Oscillation bursts (fishbones) of magnetically confined plasmas are associated with the excitation of an m0=1 mode when the ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) threshold for the instability of this mode is reached. Near this threshold and in the absence of an effective ‘‘viscous’’ dissipative process, this mode remains marginally stable as a result of finite ion Larmor radius effects and has a real frequency of oscillation near the ion diamagnetic frequency. The release of the mode excitation energy related to the gradient of the plasma pressure, in the case of perpendicular neutral beam injection, is allowed by the resonant interaction of the mode with fast trapped ions that precess around the torus as a result of the curvature and the gradient of the confining magnetic field. This process plays the role of an effective viscosity. A consequence of the presented interpretation is that fishbone oscillations may also be excited in the case of parallel beam injection. In fact, for relatively low values of the beam transverse pressure, the basic mode frequency is related to the parameters of the target plasma and does not depend on the magnetic drift frequency of the beam particles that are injected nor on their velocity distribution.