LECTURES ON THE HYDROMAGNETIC STABILITY OF A CYLINDRICAL PLASMA. IV. SUYDAM'S NECESSARY CONDITION FOR STABILITY

Technical Report · Tue Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 1959

OSTI ID:4208865

Tayler, R J

It has been shown that the stabilized pinch may suffer from very localized surface instabilities. This has been demonstrated by constructing unstable perturbations but it has not been shown that these are the worst possible perturbations. Suydam has generalized these results in two ways by trying to find the worst possible penturbation and by considering arbitrary configurations of a cylindrical plasma instead of only those of the stabilized pinch type. He has solved the third Euler-Lagrange equation of the energy principle and obtained a criterion for the resulting penturbation to be stable. The solution of the Euler Lagrange equation may in principle lead to either a minimum or a maximum and he has not been able to show that it always leads to a minimum. Thus there may still be worse perturbations and the stability criterion is necessary but it raay not be sufficient for stability. Several examples are given of fields which satisfy Suydam's criterion. (auth)

• Research Organization: United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. Research Group. Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, Berks, England
• NSA Number: NSA-14-004030
• OSTI ID: 4208865
• Report Number(s): AERE-L-105
• Country of Publication: United Kingdom
• Language: English

Related Subjects

CONFIGURATION
CYLINDERS
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
DISTURBANCES
MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS
PHYSICS
PINCH
PLASMA
STABILITY
SURFACES
SUYDAM CONDITION