Reconstruction of the magnetic perturbation in a toroidal force-free circular plasma: application to the Reversed Field Pinch

Abstract

A new method to obtain the radial profile of the magnetic perturbation in a toroidal force-free plasma having circular cross section is developed. The method is quite general and can be applied to any circular low-beta plasma once suitable boundary conditions are imposed. In particular, due to its characteristics, it is appropriate for describing the Reversed Field Pinch (RFP) configuration. The curvilinear metric of the toroidal geometry is described by adopting flux co-ordinates, and the magnetic field is expressed by the contravariant representation with two independent potentials. The method leads to a system of Newcomb-like equations in the two independent potentials for modes with the same toroidal n-number and poloidal mode number m coupled by toroidicity. The advantage of this description is that the potentials together with the metric coefficients can be related in a straightforward manner to the magnetic field. Moreover it is formally simple and maintains a similarity with the cylindrical treatment. Indeed it is customary in RFPs to approach the analysis of MHD instabilities by using cylindrical geometry. Nonetheless the effect of a more realistic toroidal geometry can play an important role, and indeed by applying the method to the Reversed Field eXperiment (RFX) plasma we found that the toroidal effects on the magnetic perturbations are not negligible.