Dissipative-drift wave instability in the presence of impurity radiation

It is believed that electrostatic fluctuations in edge plasmas are usually triggered by micro and macroscopic plasma instabilities. The latter involve dissipative-drift waves as well as tearing and rippling modes in nonuniform plasmas. However, if the plasma edge contains impurity radiation, then the radiative condensation instability could be the cause of nonthermal fluctuations. The radiative condensation instabilities have been extensively investigated in a homogeneous plasma by many authors. The effect of equilibrium density and electron temperature inhomogeneities in the study of radiative condensation instabilities has been examined by Shukla and Yu. They found new drift-like modes driven by the combined effect of impurity radiation loss and the equilibrium density and temperature gradients. The analyses of Shukla and Yu is, however, limited to low-frequency, long wavelength collisionless drift waves. Since the edge plasma of toroidal devices is highly collisional, the results of collisionless theories cannot be directly applied to explain the origin of nonthermal fluctuations. In this paper, we study the influence of impurity radiation on the dissipative-drift wave instability in a collision-dominated nonuniform plasma embedded in a homogeneous magnetic field. (author) 6 refs