Fishbone instability driven by trapped fast ions in a toroidal plasma with reversed magnetic shear

Abstract

Based on the non-perturbative approach, the hybrid code MARS-K is applied to study fishbone (FB) instabilities driven by trapped fast ions in a toroidal plasma with q profile nearly being flat or non-monotonic. We explore the dependency of the FB with variation in the fast ion distribution, thermal particle kinetic effects, safety factor (q) profile and plasma resistivity. When the safety factor minimum value is larger than unity (i.e. $q_{\mathrm{min}}\gt 1$), the mode can be excited by isotropic or anisotropic fast ions, with the latter strongly enhancing the mode growth rate. The mode frequency increases with increasing $q_{\mathrm{min}}$, and is more easily triggered in a equilibrium with two q = 1 surfaces, compared with the case with one or no q = 1 surface. Kinetic contributions from transit resonance of passing fast ions and from bounce resonance of trapped fast ions strongly enhance mode instability. The passing thermal ions induced Landau damping has a strong stabilization effect. Furthermore, in such a weak, even reversed magnetic shear plasma, the radial mode structure of FB mode monotonically decreases to zero at q = 1 flux surface instead of a step-like function, and it depends on the kinetic contributions from particles. In addition, the plasma resistivity significantly stabilizes the mode near the marginally unstable point.