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Updated: May 18, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Resilience of quasi-isodynamic stellarators against trapped-particle instabilities
J H E Proll1, P Helander, J W Connor
1Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, EURATOM Association, Teilinstitut Greifswald, Wendelsteinstraße 1, 17491 Greifswald, Germany.
Abstract:
It is shown that in perfectly quasi-isodynamic stellarators, trapped particles with a bounce frequency much higher than the frequency of the instability are stabilizing in the electrostatic and collisionless limit. The collisionless trapped-particle instability is therefore stable as well as the ordinary electron-density-gradient-driven trapped-electron mode. This result follows from the energy balance of electrostatic instabilities and is thus independent of all other details of the magnetic geometry.
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