Stability boundaries for fast particle driven TAE in stellarators

The influence of fast particles on TAE modes in stellarators is investigated in the framework of a kinetic MHD approach. The theoretical model couples ideal MHD with a drift kinetic equation allowing the perturbative calculation of growth and damping rates due the several particle species. Here, the code considers passing particles only. Comparison is made between the numerical results and a local theory where the latter turned out to be a useful first guess approximation. While the fast particle drive is, as in tokamaks, mainly due to the coupling with the toroidal components of the modulus of the magnetic field, the ion contributions to the damping stem from the coupling with the helical components. (author)