The effect of an anisotropic pressure of thermal particles on resistive wall mode stability

The effect of an anisotropic pressure of thermal particles on resistive wall mode stability in tokamak fusion plasmas is derived through kinetic theory and assessed through calculation with the MISK code [B. Hu et al., Phys. Plasmas 12, 0 57301 (2005)]. The fluid anisotropy is treated as a small perturbation on the plasma equilibrium and modeled with a bi-Maxwellian distribution function. A complete stability treatment without an assumption of high frequency mode rotation leads to anisotropic kinetic terms in the dispersion relation in addition to anisotropy corrections to the fluid terms. With the density and the average pressure kept constant, when thermal particles have a higher temperature perpendicular to the magnetic field than parallel, the fluid pressure-driven ballooning destabilization term is reduced. Additionally, the stabilizing kinetic effects of the trapped thermal ions can be enhanced. Together these two effects can lead to a modest increase in resistive wall mode stability.