Macroscopic kink instabilities in toroidal relativistic beams

Abstract

The interaction of such beams with the shear Alfven modes of the background plasma has been examined and a class of low-frequency instabilities which are similar to the hydrodynamic kink instabilities of the current-carrying plasma have been found. However, for the case of a beam-plasma configuration, the spectrum of the Alfven modes is, in general, complex, which precludes the use of an energy principle. A normal mode approach is employed and both growth rates and real frequencies for n=1, m=1, 2, 3, 4 instabilities for various values of beam energy and nu A/c have been calculated.