Toroidal coupling of ideal magnetohydrodynamic instabilities in tokamak plasmas

A theoretical framework is developed to describe the ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability properties of axisymmetric toroidal plasmas. The mode structure is described by a set of poloidal harmonics in configuration space. The energy functional, δW, is then determined by a set of matrix elements that are computed from the interaction integrals between these harmonics. In particular, the formalism may be used to study the stability of finite-n ballooning modes. Using for illustration the s-α equilibrium, salient features of the n⇒∞ stability boundary can be deduced from an appropriate choice of test function for these harmonics. The analysis can be extended to include the toroidal coupling of a free-boundary kink eigenfunction to the finite-n ideal ballooning mode. A unified stability condition is derived that describes the external kink mode, a finite-n ballooning mode, and their interaction. The interaction term plays a destabilizing role that lowers the instability threshold of the toroidally coupled mode. These modes may play a role in understanding plasma edge phenomena, L-H physics and edge localized modes (ELMs).