Resistive wall modes and error field amplification

Resistive wall modes and the rapid damping of plasma rotation by the amplification of magnetic field errors are related physical phenomena that affect the performance of the advanced tokamak and spherical torus plasma confinement devices. Elements of our understanding of these phenomena and the code that is used to design the major experimental facilities are based on the electrical circuit representation of the response of the plasma to perturbations. Although the circuit representation of the plasma may seem heuristic, this representation can be rigorously obtained using Maxwell's equations and linearity for plasmas that evolve on a disparate time scale from that of external currents. These and related results are derived. In addition methods are given for finding the plasma information that the circuit representation requires using post-processors for codes that calculate perturbed plasma equilibria. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.