Combined effects of trapped energetic ions and resistive layer damping on the stability of the resistive wall mode

Journal article, 2016

A dispersion relation is derived for the stability of the resistive wall mode (RWM), which includes both the resistive layer damping physics and the toroidal precession drift resonance damping from energetic ions in tokamak plasmas. The dispersion relation is numerically solved for a model plasma, for the purpose of systematic investigation of the RWM stability in multi-dimensional plasma parameter space including the plasma resistivity, the radial location of the resistive wall, as well as the toroidal flow velocity. It is found that the toroidal favorable average curvature in the resistive layer contributes a significant stabilization of the RWM. This stabilization is further enhanced by adding the drift kinetic contribution from energetic ions. Furthermore, two traditionally assumed inner layer models are considered and compared in the dispersion relation, resulting in different predictions for the stability of the RWM.