Ambipolar transport via trapped-electron whistler instability along open magnetic field lines

An open field line plasma is bounded by a chamber wall which intercepts the magnetic field. Steady state requires an upstream plasma source balancing the particle loss to the boundary. In cases where the electrons have a long mean free path, ambipolarity in parallel transport critically depends on collisionless detrapping of the electrons via wave-particle interaction. The trapped-electron whistler instability, whose nonlinear saturation produces a spectrum of whistler waves that is responsible for the electron detrapping flux, is shown to be an unusually robust kinetic instability, which is essential to the universality of the ambipolar constraint in plasma transport.