A detailed study of ion cyclotron interactions in a toroidal plasma has been carried out in order to elucidate the role of toroidal effects on ion cyclotron emission. It is well known that non-relaxed distribution functions can give rise to excitation of magnetosonic waves by ion cyclotron interactions when the distribution function increases with respect to the perpendicular velocity. We have extended and clarified the conditions under which even collisionally relaxed distribution function can destabilize magnetosonic eigenmodes. In a toroidal plasma, cyclotron interactions at the plasma boundary with ions having barely co-current passing orbits and marginally trapped orbits can cause destabilisation by the strong inversion of the distribution function along the characteristics of cyclotron interaction by neo-classical effects. The unstable interactions can further be enhanced by tangential interactions, which can also prevent the interactions from reaching the stable part of the characteristics, where they interact with trapped orbits. Conditions on the localization of the magnetosonic eigenmodes for unstable excitation are analysed by studying the anti-Hermitian part of the susceptibility tensor of thermonuclear alpha-particles. The pattern of positive and negative regions of the anti-Hermitian part of the susceptibility tensor of thermonuclear alpha-particles is, in general, consistent with the excitation of edge localized magnetosonic eigenmodes, even though the eigenmodes are usually not localized in the major radius and for distribution functions that have relaxed to steady state.
Diffusion induced by cyclotron resonance heating