J. B. Taylor
Relaxation is the result of turbulence in a plasma that behaves essentially as an ideal conducting fluid, but has a small resistivity and viscosity. These small effects are locally enhanced by the turbulence and lead to reconnection of magnetic field lines. This destroys an infinity of topological constraints, leaving only the total magnetic helici…
PublishedJ. B. Taylor J. W. Connor P. Helander
Transport barriers and transitions between modes of low and high confinement in tokamak plasmas are often attributed to suppression of turbulence by a shear flow related to a plasma gradient, e.g., of density. However, such shear flow is also affected by the second derivative of density. When this is introduced there is no unique relation between f…
PublishedR. A. Cairns C. N. Lashmoredavies D. C. Mcdonald M. Taylor
In a fusion plasma ion cyclotron heating may be applied to a plasma in a regime where there is a population of ions whose Larmor radius is not small compared to the perpendicular wavelength. In this case the equations describing the propagation and absorption of the wave are integro-differential, describing the non-local response of the plasma to t…
PublishedR. A. Cairns H. Holt D. C. Mcdonald M. Taylor C. N. Lashmore-Davies
Absorption of waves propagating across an inhomogenous magnetic field is of crucial importance for cyclotron resonance heating. When the Larmor radius of the resonant particles is small compared to the wavelength then the propagation is described by differential equations, a comparatively simple method for obtaining which has recently been given by…
PublishedJ. B. Taylor H. R. Wilson
Short wavelength fluctuations may be a source of anomalous transport in toroidal plasmas. Early investigations concerned electron and ion modes that occur only at a particular radius and have a localised eigenfunction: such modes do not seem important for transport. Recently, Connor, Taylor and Wilson [1] described electron modes that occur at all …
PublishedJ. W. Connor J. B. Taylor H. R. Wilson
An important conclusion of earlier work using the ballooning representation is that shear damping of plasma drift waves may be suppressed in a torus. This application of the formalism requires that the diamagnetic frequency have a maximum and implies that drift modes can exist only at this maximum. Here we show that there is a far more general clas…
PublishedJ. W. Connor R. J. Hastie J. B. Taylor
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…
PublishedJ. W. Connor R. J. Hastie J. B. Taylor
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…
Published