Comparison between resistive and collisionless double tearing modes for nearby resonant surfaces

Abstract

The linear instability and nonlinear dynamics of collisional (resistive) and collisionless (due to electron inertia) double tearing modes (DTMs) are compared with the use of a reduced cylindrical model of a tokamak plasma. We focus on cases where two q = 2 resonant surfaces are located a small distance apart. It is found that regardless of the magnetic reconnection mechanism, resistivity or electron inertia, the fastest growing linear eigenmodes may have high poloidal mode numbers m ∼ 10. The spectrum of unstable modes tends to be broader in the collisionless case. In the nonlinear regime, it is shown that in both cases fast growing high-m DTMs lead to an annular collapse involving small magnetic island structures. In addition, collisionless DTMs exhibit multiple reconnection cycles due to reversibility of collisionless reconnection and strong E × B flows. Collisionless reconnection leads to a saturated stable state, while in the collisional case resistive decay keeps the system weakly dynamic by driving it back towards the unstable equilibrium maintained by a source term.