Neoclassical dissipation and resistive wall modes in tokamaks

Abstract

It is shown that the critical toroidal plasma flow speed that is required to stabilize the resistive wall mode in tokamaks is reduced by a factor of the order of B/Bθ or of 1.265ε3/4B/Bθ depending on the plasma parameters when the perturbed neoclassical viscosity driven current is taken into account. Here, B is the magnetic field strength, Bθ is the poloidal magnetic field strength, and ε is the inverse aspect ratio. This effect is illustrated using an existing model for the resistive wall modes by including the neoclassical dissipation in the derivation of the dispersion relation. The derivation is based on fluid equations with the plasma viscosity, calculated using kinetic equation, as the closure. The reduction of the critical toroidal speed is a consequence of the parallel (to the magnetic field B) momentum equation when neoclassical viscosity becomes important. The results are compared with experimental observations in tokamaks.