Progress towards numerical and experimental simulations of fusion relevant beam instabilities

Abstract

In certain plasmas, non-thermal electron distributions can produce instabilities. These instabilities may be useful or potentially disruptive. Therefore the study of these instabilities is of importance in a variety of fields including fusion science and astrophysics. Following on from previous work conducted at the University of Strathclyde on the cyclotron resonance maser instability that was relevant to astrophysical radiowave generation, further instabilities are being investigated. Particular instabilities of interest are the anomalous Doppler instability which can occur in magnetic confinement fusion plasmas and the two-stream instability that is of importance in fast-ignition inertial confinement fusion. To this end, computational simulations have been undertaken to investigate the behaviour of both the anomalous Doppler and two-stream instabilities with the goal of designing an experiment to observe these behaviours in a laboratory.