Oscillations of zonal flows in stellarators

The linear response of a collisionless stellarator plasma to an applied radial electric field is calculated, both analytically and numerically.Unlike in a tokamak, the electric field and associated zonal flow develop oscillations before settling down to a stationary state, the so-called Rosenbluth-Hinton flow residual.These oscillations are caused by locally trapped particles with radially drifting bounce orbits.These particles also cause a kind of Landau damping of the oscillations that depends on the magnetic configuration.The relative importance of geodesic acoustic modes and zonal-flow oscillations therefore varies among different stellarators.