WAVE-DRIVEN ROTATION IN CENTRIFUGAL MIRRORS

Centrifugal mirrors use supersonic rotation to pro-vide axial confinement and enhanced stability. Usually the rotation is produced using electrodes, but these elec-trodes have limited the rotation to the Alfven critical ionization velocity, which is too slow to be useful for fusion. Instead, the rotation could be produced using radio frequency waves. A fixed azimuthal ripple is a simple and efficient wave that could produce rotation by harnessing alpha particle energy. This is an exten-sion of the alpha channeling effect. The alpha particle power and efficiency in a simulated devices is sufficient to produce rotation without external energy input. By eliminating the need for electrodes, this opens new op-portunities for centrifugal traps. I