Magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium of an elliptical plasma cylinder is studied for two different current distributions, with longitudinal current either distributed uniformly over the cross section, or confined to the surface only. Magnetic surfaces are found analytically in the vacuum around the plasma. They are elongated along the major axis, and bound by a separatrix.
A magnetic plasma confinement configuration aimed at sustaining high-current densities is proposed. It involves a small triangular and elliptic deformation imposed over a circular cross section of the plasma column by a surrounding conducting shell at close distance. The stability against kink modes is analyzed and shown to be the same as that of an equivalent plasma column with equal area, but circular cross section. An assessment of the over-all stability of this configuration points to a significant improvement, in terms of the Ohmic heating resulting from the induced current, over the known configurations with circular cross section.
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