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Confinement Asymmetry and Trapped Particle Effects on Radial Transport in Charged Plasmas
Volume 47 · Number 1T · January 2005 · Pages 263-266
Technical Paper · Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement
A. A. Kabantsev, C. F. Driscoll
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Weak axial variations in B(z) or  (z) in "axisymmetric" plasma traps cause a fraction of the particles to be trapped axially, with a velocity-space separatrix between trapped and passing populations. The trapped and passing particles experience different dynamics in response to a variety of  -asymmetries in the E × B rotating plasma, so a discontinuity in the velocity-space distribution f(v) tends to form at the separatrix. Collisional scatterings thus cause large fluxes as they smooth the distribution in a boundary layer near the separatrix. In essence, this separatrix dissipation damps the AC or DC longitudinal currents induced by plasma waves or confinement field asymmetries. This trapped-particlemediated damping and "neoclassical" particle transport often dominates in cylindrical pure electron plasmas, and may be important in other nominally symmetric open systems.
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