Abstract
The guiding center plasma description of an isotropic, collisionless plasma is used to study the linear stability of the diffuse screw pinch in the special case when the poloidal magnetic field component is small compared with the axial magnetic field component. A two‐term approximation for growth rates is derived from the linearized guiding center plasma equations by straightforward asymptotic expansion in terms of a small parameter that is proportional to (Bϑ/rBz)‖r=0. The two‐term approximate solution is compared with exact solutions and the range of validity of the approximations is examined. The result obtained from the guiding center plasma model is compared and contrasted with that from ideal magnetohydrodynamics. It is shown that the isotropic guiding center plasma may be more unstable or less unstable than ideal magnetohydrodynamics for the same configuration, depending on the parameters.
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