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(THP2/30) Effect of Rotation on Ideal and Resistive MHD Modes

M. S. Chu

General Atomics, P.O. Box 5608, San Diego, California 92186-5608, U.S.A.

L. Chen, L-J. Zheng

Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, California 92679-4575. U.S.A.

C. Ren

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1687, U.S.A.

A. Bondeson

Department of Electromagnetics, Chalmers University of Technology, S-412 96 Göteborg, Sweden

Abstract.  Experimental observations suggest that toroidal plasma rotation can play a crucial role in determining the stability of a tokamak. Conventional MHD stability analysis ignores rotation. Results from analytic and numerical analysis of a number of tokamak stability issues including toroidal plasma rotation are reported. Depending on the plasma and rotation profiles, its net effect can be either stabilizing or destabilizing; it also has substantial effect on the observed mode structure. The localized interchange, the double kink mode, low n resistive MHD modes and the effect of sheared rotation on magnetic island structure are discussed.

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IAEA 2001