Fishbone Instability Excited by Barely Trapped Electrons

Abstract

Fishbone instability excited by barely trapped suprathermal electrons (BTSEs) in tokamaks is investigated theoretically. The frequency of the mode is found to close to procession frequency of BTSEs. The growth rate of the mode is much smaller than that of the ideal magnetohytrodynamic (MHD) internal kink mode that is in contrast to the case of trapped ion driven fishbone instability. The analyses also show that spatial density gradient reversal is necessary for the instability. The correlation of the results with experiments is discussed.