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Indexed by:Journal Papers

Date of Publication:2015-09-01

Journal:PHYSICS OF PLASMAS

Included Journals:SCIE、EI、Scopus

Volume:22

Issue:9

ISSN No.:1070-664X

Abstract:The magnetohydrodynamic-kinetic hybrid theory has been extensively and successfully applied for interpreting experimental observations of macroscopic, low frequency instabilities, such as the resistive wall mode, in fusion plasmas. In this work, it is discovered that an analytic version of the hybrid formulation predicts a bifurcation of the mode dynamics while varying certain physical parameters of the plasma, such as the thermal particle collisionality or the ratio of the thermal ion to electron temperatures. This bifurcation can robustly occur under reasonably large parameter spaces as well as with different assumptions, for instance, on the particle collision model. Qualitatively similar bifurcation features are also observed in full toroidal computations presented in this work, based on a non-perturbative hybrid formulation. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.