Effect of finite β on stellarator transport

A theory of the modification of stellarator transport due to the presence of finite plasma pressure is developed, and applied to a range of stellarator configurations. For many configurations of interest, plasma transport can change by more than an order of magnitude in the progression from zero pressure to the equilibrium β limit of the device. Thus, a stellarator with transport-optimized vacuum fields can have poor confinement at the desired operating β. Without an external compensating field, increasing β tends to degrade confinement, unless the initial field structure is very carefully chosen. The theory permits one to correctly determine this vacuum structure, in terms of the desired structure of the field at a prescribed operating β. With a compensating external field, the deleterious effect of finite β on transport can be partially eliminated