Collisionless pitch angle scattering of plasma ions at the edge region of a field-reversed configuration

The motion of a plasma ion gyrating around the separatrix of a field-reversed configuration is studied. Numerical studies showed that the action integral of a particle changes abruptly when a particle passes through the vicinity of a field null x point. This phenomena is understood as collisionless...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physics of plasmas 1997-12, Vol.4 (12), p.4301-4308
Main Authors: Takahashi, Toshiki, Tomita, Yukihiro, Momota, Hiromu, Shabrov, Nikita V.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:The motion of a plasma ion gyrating around the separatrix of a field-reversed configuration is studied. Numerical studies showed that the action integral of a particle changes abruptly when a particle passes through the vicinity of a field null x point. This phenomena is understood as collisionless stochastic scattering of the pitch angle. In the case of a particle with positive canonical angular momentum P θ , the resultant correlation coefficients of the action integral between before and after the scattering appear to be stochastic in some cases. As the action integral increases for a particle with negative P θ , its motion tends to be adiabatic. If the negative P θ of a particle approaches zero, a stochastic motion is observed.
ISSN:1070-664X
1089-7674
DOI:10.1063/1.872592