Effect of rotation on ideal and resistive MHD modes

Experimental observations suggest that toroidal plasma rotation can play a crucial role in determining the stability of a tokamak. Conventional MHD stability analysis ignores rotation. Results from analytic and numerical analysis of a number of tokamak stability issues including toroidal plasma rotation are reported. Depending on the plasma and rotation profiles, its net effect can be either stabilizing or destabilizing; it also has substantial effect on the observed mode structure. The localized interchange, the double kink mode, low n resistive MHD modes and the effect of sheared rotation on magnetic island structure are discussed. (author)