Unified fluid/kinetic description of plasma microinstabilities. Part II: Applications

The unified fluid/kinetic equations developed in Part I [Phys. Fluids B 4, (spec. char. missing)(spec. char. missing)(spec. char. missing) (1992)] of this work are used to study plasma-drift-type microinstabilities. A generalized perturbed Ohm's law is derived (for a sheared slab magnetic field model) that is uniformly valid for arbitrary collisionality ω/ν and adiabaticity ω/kparallelvt. Applications to electron drift waves, ion temperature gradient modes (ηi modes) and electron electromagnetic modes (microtearing modes) are addressed. It is shown that the unified equations exhibit their simple and uniformed features in the plasma microinstability analysis. The well-known results of these instability branches in both fluid and adiabatic limits are easily recovered using the new fluid/kinetic equations. Generalization of the two-field Hasegawa--Wakatani turbulent equations [Phys. Rev. Lett. 50, 682 (1983)] to include electron temperature fluctuations and linear Landau damping effects is also discussed. Finally, a new method is presented to facilitate the study of magnetic trapped particle modes using the present kinetic closure procedure. It is found that by including the trapped particle effects in the closure relations, the usual separation of the fluid equations into trapped and untrapped components becomes unnecessary