An Extended Variational Method for the Resistive Wall Mode in Toroidal Plasma Confinement Devices

TL;DR

This paper extends the variational analysis of resistive wall modes in toroidal plasmas to include thick-wall effects, revealing asymmetries in mode growth and decay rates and implications for rotational stabilization.

Contribution

It provides a generalized formula for resistive wall mode growth rates accounting for thick walls, enhancing understanding of plasma stability in fusion devices.

Findings

Thick-wall effects do not alter marginal stability points.

Growing modes have higher growth rates than thin-wall predictions.

Increasing wall thickness improves rotational stabilization of the mode.

Abstract

The external-kink stability of a toroidal plasma surrounded by a rigid resistive wall is investigated. The well-known analysis of Haney & Freidberg is rigorously extended to allow for a wall that is sufficiently thick that the thin-shell approximation does not necessarily hold. A generalized Haney-Freidberg formula for the growth-rate of the resistive wall mode is obtained. Thick-wall effects do not change the marginal stability point of the mode, but introduce an interesting asymmetry between growing and decaying modes. Growing modes have growth-rates that exceed those predicted by the original Haney-Freidberg formula. On the other hand, decaying modes have decay-rates that are less than those predicted by the original formula. The well-known Hu-Betti formula for the rotational stabilization of the resistive wall mode is also generalized to take thick-wall effects into account. Increasing wall thickness facilitates the rotational stabilization of the mode, because it decreases the critical toroidal electromagnetic torque that the wall must exert on the plasma. On the other hand, the real frequency of the mode at the marginal stability point increases with increasing wall thickness.