Dynamics of seed magnetic island formation due to geometrically coupled perturbations

Technical Report · Mon Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/666029· OSTI ID:666029

Hegna, C C; Callen, J D ^[1]; LaHaye, R J ^[2]

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1. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
2. General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States)

Seed magnetic island formation due to a dynamically growing external source in toroidal confinement devices is modeled as an initial value forced reconnection problem. For an external source whose amplitude grows on a time scale quickly compared to the Sweet-Parker time of resistive magnetohydrodynamics, the induced reconnection is characterized by a current sheet and a reconnected flux amplitude which lags in time the source amplitude. This suggests that neoclassical tearing modes, whose excitation requires a seed magnetic island, are more difficult to cause in high Lundquist number plasmas.

• Research Organization: Univ. of Wisconsin, Center for Plasma Theory and Computation, Madison, WI (United States); General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Research, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: FG02-92ER54139; AC03-89ER51114
• OSTI ID: 666029
• Report Number(s): UW-CPTC--98-5; ON: DE98007138
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
MAGNETIC ISLANDS
MAGNETIC RECONNECTION
NEOCLASSICAL TRANSPORT THEORY
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
TEARING INSTABILITY
TOKAMAK DEVICES