Magnetic Island Formation by External Cyclic Perturbation in Rotating and Non-rotating Plasmas

Abstract

Effects of a non-monotonically evolving external perturbation on a plasma, that is stable against tearing modes, are numerically investigated. It is found that for a magnetic island driven by an external single-cycle magnetic perturbation, the time constants during the phases of growth and decay are different. This difference in time constants causes a finite magnetic island to form even after the external perturbation is removed. Therefore, the saturation width of a magnetic island driven by a successive applications of an external single-cycle perturbation becomes larger than the maximum magnetic island width driven by a single application of that. For a rotating plasma, the background rotation is damped as the magnetic island grows due to an external perturbation [R. Fitzpatrick, Phys. Plasmas 5, 3325(1998)]. Therefore, for a rotating plasma, the driven magnetic island can enter an explosive growth stage due to successive applications of a single-cycle perturbation even with amplitude smaller than the critical value for the onset of the rapid growth in the case of a monotonically increasing or step-function type external perturbation. These features are important in explaining the explosive growth of magnetic islands and the onset of neoclassical tearing mode due to non-monotonically growing MHD phenomena such as sawtooth, fishbones and ELM.