Thermonuclear Fusion Reactivities for Drifting Tri-Maxwellian Ion Velocity Distributions

The presence of strong magnetic fields in magnetically confined thermonuclear fusion plasmas introduces a considerable anisotropy in the ion velocity distributions. Drifting or streaming of ionic species is another source of anisotropy in fusion plasmas. To account for these anisotropies, we consider in the present work a generalization of the equilibrium Maxwellian distribution in the form of a drifting tri-Maxwellian distribution function. It is shown that the calculation of thermonuclear reactivities for these distributions is best carried out in a transformed velocity space. Computational results for gyrotropic velocity distributions with drifts parallel and perpendicular to the magnetic field are presented.