Abstract Details
Abstracts
Author: David M Testa
Requested Type: Poster
Submitted: 2026-03-14 20:38:06
Co-authors: Richard Fitzpatrick
Contact Info:
Institute for Fusion Studies
2515 Speedway
Austin, Texas 78712
USA
Abstract Text:
We report the results of an investigation into the relationship between interchange and ballooning stability in levitated dipole fusion plasmas. This study uses a technique based on the Rayleigh quotient and the ideal-MHD energy principle, applied to equilibria computed with our custom Grad-Shafranov solver for static levitated-dipole plasmas. Contrary to previous results, we find that stability to interchange modes does not necessarily imply stability to ballooning modes. We suggest that this occurs due to the plasma exploiting strong curvature variation along the purely poloidal field lines, overcoming the stabilizing influence of field-line bending.
Characterization: 1.0
Comments: