Stability of Alfvén gap modes in burning plasmas

A stability analysis is carried out for energetic particle-Alfvén gap modes. Three modes have been identified: the toroidicity, ellipticity, and noncircular triangularity induced Alfvén eigenmodes (TAE, EAE, and NAE). In highly elongated plasma cross sections with κ−1∼1, the EAE may be a more robust mode than the TAE and NAE. It is found that electron Landau damping in highly elongated plasmas has a strong stabilizing influence on the n=1 EAE, while ion Landau damping stabilizes the n=1 TAE in high-density regimes. Furthermore, the NAE turns out to be stable for all currently proposed ignition experiments. The stability analysis of a typical burning plasma device, Burning Plasma Experiment (BPX) [Phys. Scr. T16, 89 (1987)] shows that n>1 gap modes can pose a serious threat to the achievement of ignition conditions.