Effect of Elongation on Critical Gradient for Toroidal Electron Temperature Gradient Modes

The electron temperature gradient mode is investigated in elongated toroidal plasmas with a gyrokinetic integral eigenmode equation code. Dependence of the critical electron temperature gradient on the elongation is calculated. It is found that when the elongation increases, the growth rate spectrum is greatly shifted towards shorter poloidal wavelength, and then the poloidal wavenumber at which the mode is destabilizing critically in elongated plasmas will be larger than that in circular plasmas.