Inertial tearing modes in magnetically-confined plasmas

Abstract

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.