Magnetic Confinement by Alfven Carpets

Abstract

A "carpet" of torsional Alfven waves, resonantly excited in an annulus inside a toroidal conducting vessel, could maintain magnetized plasma inside of the annulus against the inherent outward expansion. Such toroidal magnetic confinement for fusion could present some advantages over conventional tokamaks. The idea could also be used to stabilize interchange and ballooning modes in tokamaks and other interchange-limited fusion devices.