Plasma instability

Any process by which a small disturbance in a plasma grows instead of dying away. The large-scale ones, often called MHD (magnetohydrodynamic) instabilities, bend or break the whole plasma: a pinched column can kink sideways or neck into sausage-like segments, and a tokamak plasma pushed too far in current, density or pressure can disrupt. Smaller-scale turbulence does not destroy the plasma but carries heat out of it faster than simple theory predicts, and largely sets the energy confinement time. Much of fusion research since the 1950s has been about understanding and suppressing both.

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concept:plasma-instability

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