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Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 2321 - 2324 (2001)

Strong “Quantum” Chaos in the Global Ballooning Mode Spectrum of Three-Dimensional Plasmas

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R. L. Dewar *
Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory, P.O. Box 451, Princeton, New Jersey 08543

P. Cuthbert and R. Ball
Department of Theoretical Physics and Plasma Research Laboratory, Research School of Physical Sciences & Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra 0200, Australia

Received 27 November 2000

The spectrum of ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) pressure-driven (ballooning) modes in strongly nonaxisymmetric toroidal systems is difficult to analyze numerically owing to the singular nature of ideal MHD caused by lack of an inherent scale length. In this paper, ideal MHD is regularized by using a k-space cutoff, making the ray tracing for the WKB ballooning formalism a chaotic Hamiltonian billiard problem. The minimum width of the toroidal Fourier spectrum needed for resolving toroidally localized ballooning modes with a global eigenvalue code is estimated from the Weyl formula. This phase-space-volume estimation method is applied to two stellarator cases.


©2001 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.2321
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.2321
PACS: 52.35.Py, 05.45.Mt, 52.55.Hc

* Permanent address: Research School of Physical Sciences & Engineering, The Australian National University.Email address: robert.dewar@anu.edu.au

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