The direct criterion of Newcomb for the ideal MHD stability of an axisymmetric toroidal plasma

A method is presented for determining the ideal magnetohydrodynamic stability of an axisymmetric toroidal plasma, based on a toroidal generalization of the method developed by Newcomb for fixed-boundary modes in a cylindrical plasma. For toroidal mode number n ≠ 0 , the stability problem is reduced to the numerical integration of a high-order complex system of ordinary differential equations, the Euler-Lagrange equation for extremizing the potential energy, for the coupled amplitudes of poloidal harmonics m as a function of the radial coordinate ψ in a straight-fieldline flux coordinate system. Unlike the cylindrical case, different poloidal harmonics couple to each other, which introduces coupling between adjacent singular intervals. A boundary condition is used at each singular surface, where m = nq and q ( ψ ) is the safety factor, to cross the singular surface and continue the solutions beyond it. Fixed-boundary instability is indicated by the vanishing of a real determinant of a Hermitian complex matrix constructed from the fundamental matrix of solutions, the generalization of Newcomb's crossing criterion. In the absence of fixed-boundary instabilities, an M × M plasma response matrix W P , with M the number of poloidal harmonics used, is constructed from the Euler-Lagrange solutions at the plasma-vacuum boundary. This is added to a vacuum response matrix W V to form a total response matrix W T . The existence of negative eigenvalues of W T indicates the presence of free-boundary instabilities. The method is implemented in the fast and accurate DCON code.