The resistive wall mode ~ RWM ! poses a threat to many plasma confinement devices. The continuous rotation of the wall relative to the plasma makes it appear perfectly conducting, because of the skin effect, but this is ineffective if the perturbation locks to the wall. This raises the question of whether a nonuniformly rotating wall is more effect…
This is Part II of a study of resonant perturbations, such as resistive tearing and ballooning modes, in a torus. These are described by marginal ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations in the regions between resonant surfaces; matching across these surfaces provides the dispersion relation. Part I [Phys. Fluids B3, 1532 (1991)] described how all…
In a cylindrical plasma, tearing modes can be calculated by asymptotic matching of ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) solutions across a critical layer. This requires a quantity that represents the “discontinuity*’ in the ideal solution across the layer. In a torus, poloidal harmonics are coupled and there are many critical surfaces for each toroi…
