Inertial tearing modes in magnetically-confined plasmas

In this thesis, I analyzed the behavior of the plasma instability known as the tearing mode in parameter regimes relevant to magnetically-confined fusion plasmas. This included a derivation of the relevant equations and a method of solving them using Fourier analysis. This method allowed the derivation of several analytic results and efficient calculation of numeric results about the growth rates and frequencies of the analyzed modes, and demonstrated the existence of a second type of unstable tearing mode related to electron inertia. The results of the analysis of this inertial mode proved consistent with experimental data on the tearing mode from JET, and suggests further analysis in the nonlinear regime to verify this consistency.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Montag, Peter Katsumi

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Miklos Porkolab and Nuno F. G. Loureiro.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/107542

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/107542