Energizing charged particles by an orbit instability in a slowly rotating magnetic field

TL;DR

This paper analytically investigates how a slowly rotating magnetic field can destabilize charged particle orbits, leading to energization and potential plasma heating, with implications for magnetic confinement devices.

Contribution

It demonstrates that slow RMFs can cause linear instabilities in particle motion, challenging the assumption of adiabatic invariance and suggesting new plasma heating mechanisms.

Findings

RMFs oscillating below cyclotron frequency induce linear instabilities.

Instabilities break $$-invariance and energize particles.

Potential impact on plasma heating and current drive in FRCs.

Abstract

The stability of charged particle motion in a uniform magnetic field with an added spatially uniform transverse rotating magnetic field (RMF) is studied analytically. It is found that the stability diagram of a single-particle's orbit depends critically on the chosen boundary conditions. We show that for many boundary conditions and wide regions in the parameter space, RMFs oscillating far below the cyclotron frequency can cause linear instabilities in the motion which break $\mu$-invariance and energize particles. Such energization may appear at odds with the adiabatic invariance of $\mu$; however, adiabatic invariance is an asymptotic result, and does not preclude such heating by magnetic fields oscillating at slow frequencies. This mechanism may contribute to heating in the edge plasma of field-reversed configurations (FRCs) in rotamak-FRC experiments. Furthermore, these RMF-driven instabilities may significantly enhance azimuthal current drive during the formation of FRCs in such devices.