The DCLC Stabilization Knee: Warm-Plasma Streaming and the Marginal Loss-Cone Microstability of a Deuterium-Helium-3 Tandem-Mirror Plug
The drift-cyclotron loss-cone (DCLC) microstability of a deuterium-helium-3 tandem-mirror plug. A flute-mode electrostatic dispersion solver, cross-checked electromagnetically, maps the exact marginal-stability boundary. The design's warm-ion fill sits exactly on the stabilization knee: it clears DCLC only for sufficiently broad plug-edge gradients, with a weak residual cyclotron mode. Marginal but bounded and quantified; reported honestly.
Authors
- Priyanca Ford (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0395-1752)
- G L Kulcinski
Institutions
- Fusion for Energy (ES)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
- Published
- 2026-08-28
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22132169
- Primary Topic
- Magnetic confinement fusion research
- Type
- preprint