A phenomenological model on the kink mode threshold varying with the inclination of sheath boundary

Abstract

In nature and many laboratory plasmas, a magnetic flux tube threaded by current or a flux rope has a footpoint at a boundary. The current driven kink mode is one of the fundamental ideal magnetohydrodynamic instabilities in plasmas. It has an instability threshold that has been found to strongly depend on boundary conditions (BCs). We provide a theoretical model to explain the transition of this threshold dependence between nonline tied and line tied boundary conditions. We evaluate model parameters using experimentally measured plasma data, explicitly verify several kink eigenfunctions, and validate the model predictions for boundary conditions BCs that span the range between NLT and LT BCs. Based on this model, one could estimate the kink threshold given knowledge of the displacement of a flux rope end, or conversely estimate flux rope end motion based on knowledge of it kink stability threshold. V C 2013 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.

Flux rope dynamics in three dimensions

“…When the cone half angle = 90 • , the flat normal boundary forms a resistive sheath, allowing a non line tied or free axial boundary condition at the anode end [34]. Small cone angles constrain the end to be line tied [27,33,39].…”