Stabilization of the resistive wall mode using a fake rotating shell

Tokamak plasma performance can, in theory, be greatly improved if the so-called open-quote open-quote resistive wall mode close-quote close-quote is stabilized. This can be achieved by spinning the plasma rapidly, but such a scheme would be difficult to implement in a reactor setting. A more promising approach is to apply external feedback in order to make a resistive shell placed around the plasma act like a perfect conductor. A scheme is outlined by which a network of feedback controlled conductors surrounding the plasma can be made to act like a rotating shell. This fake rotating shell combined with a stationary conventional shell (e.g., the vacuum vessel) can completely stabilize the resistive wall mode. The gain, bandwidth, current, and power requirements of the feedback amplifiers are extremely modest. A previously proposed stabilization scheme (the intelligent shell) is also investigated, and is compared with the fake rotating shell concept. The main disadvantage of the former scheme is that it requires a high gain. copyright 1996 American Institute of Physics