Destabilization of TAE modes by particle anisotropy

Plasmas heated by ICRF produce energetic particle distribution functions which are sharply peaked in pitch-angle, and the authors show that at moderate toroidal mode numbers, this anisotropy is a competitive and even dominant instability drive when compared with the universal instability drive due to spatial gradient. The universal drive, acting along, destabilizes only co-propagating waves (i.e., waves propagating in the same toroidal direction as the diamagnetic flow of the energetic particles), but stabilizes counter-propagating waves (i.e., waves propagating in the opposite toroidal direction as the diamagnetic flow of the energetic particles). Nonetheless, the authors show that in a tokamak, it is possible that particle anisotropy can produce a larger linear growth rate for counter-propagating waves, and provide a mechanism for preferred destabilization of the counter-propagating TAE modes that are sometimes experimentally observed