The DCLC Stabilization Knee: Warm-Plasma Streaming and the Marginal Loss-Cone Microstability of a Deuterium-Helium-3 Tandem-Mirror Plug
Open access0 citations
Abstract
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.
// Source
View paper (DOI)Open access versionOpenAlexZenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)Published 2026-08-28
Authors: Priyanca Ford, G L Kulcinski
Institutions: Fusion for Energy