Plasma stabilization due to combination of a strong and alternating-sign magnetic field line curvature

Summary form only given. The plasma gross stability is required first for a steady-state magnetic confinement. One of the simplest approaches for plasma stabilization is to confine the plasma either within the good field line curvature (in minB) or within the strong (but bad) curvature. In the latter case some critical pressure gradient maintains for the confined plasma similarly to that for a ‘sand hill’. It has been found that the combination of a strong and alternating-sign curvature of the magnetic field lines leads to a substantial improvement of the plasma stabilization¹. Namely a convectively-stable plasma pressure profiles become internally peaked in a simplest magnetic geometries - e.g. tandem of the mirror trap and the cusp. It is worth noting that the system being axially symmetric.