Stability of Beta Limited Thermonuclear Burn.

The burn stability of a thermonuclear reacting plasma is examined under the assumption that a burn equilibrium exists due to the rapid increase of loss rate with plasma beta once a critical beta value is exceeded. It is found that perturbations about equilibrium generally result in a rapidly damped exponential decay and a second slow root which can be either growing unstable or damped. In the case where the slow root is growing, the possibility that it can be stabilized by feedback control of the rate at which neutral gas is fed into the system is considered. Author