Toroidal equilibrium of rotating plasma with adiabatic constraints

Abstract

A numerical technique, alternative to Grad's well-known ADM method has been proposed to deal with the slow adiabatic evolution of a toroidal plasma with flow. The equilibrium problem with prescribed adiabatic constraints may be solved by simultaneous calculations of flux surface geometry and original profile functions. Implications for the problem of bifurcation due to nonlinearity of the governing equations are discussed. In the case of field-aligned sub-Alfvénic flow the system is in the second elliptic regime if β <A2/(1 –A2) at the magnetic axis, whereAis the Mach Alfvén number of the flow. Super-Alfvénic flows do not satisfy the local firehose stability criterion.