Validation of the linear ideal magnetohydrodynamic model of three-dimensional tokamak equilibria

Journal article, 2010

The first quantitative comparison of linear ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) theory with external magnetic measurements of the nonaxisymmetric plasma perturbation driven by external long-wavelength magnetic fields in high-temperature tokamak plasmas is presented. The comparison yields good (within 20%) agreement for plasma pressures up to ∼ 75% of the ideal stability limit calculated without a conducting wall. For higher plasma pressures, the ideal MHD model tends to overestimate the perturbed field indicating the increasing importance of stabilizing nonideal effects.