  Thermal ions in spherical tokamaks have two adiabatic invariants: the
magnetic moment and the longitudinal invariant. For hot ions, variations in
magnetic-field strength over a gyro period can become sufficiently large to
cause breakdown of the adiabatic invariance. The magnetic moment is more
sensitive to perturbations than the longitudinal invariant and there exists an
intermediate regime, super-adiabaticity, where the longitudinal invariant
remains adiabatic, but the magnetic moment does not. The motion of
super-adiabatic ions remains integrable and confinement is thus preserved.
However, above a threshold energy, the longitudinal invariant becomes
non-adiabatic too, and confinement is lost as the motion becomes chaotic. We
predict beam ions in present-day spherical tokamaks to be super-adiabatic but
fusion alphas in proposed burning-plasma spherical tokamaks to be
non-adiabatic.
