Alpha-particle-driven instability of alfven waves in a tandem mirror. Final summary report, 21 February-20 May 1985

Alpha particles born at D-T fusion are mirror confined in the tandem mirror due to their relatively high energy. Therefore, they have a loss-cone type distribution in the velocity space. This anisotropy is susceptible to microinstability. The objective of this work is to study the possible instability that can be driven by the alpha loss-cone. The low frequency (at the order of the ion cyclotron frequency) wave spectrum is studied to seek the waves that can be destabilized by the alphas. The radial mode structure is found for the growth rate calculation. The alpha particle distribution with a loss-cone is obtained from a Legendre function expansion and a diffusion front method. The growth rate of the instability is formulated from linear stability theory and computed numerically. A marginal stability boundary in the ion density and temperature parameters is calculated