THE RESISTIVE DAMPING OF THE TOROIDICITY-INDUCED ALFVEN EIGENMODE

The MHD equations have been used to study the resistive damping of the toroidicity induced Alfven eigenmode by employing the ballooning formalism. In the parameter regime nu much less than epsilon3 (where nu is the normalised resistivity and epsilon is the inverse aspect ratio) the equations are solved by employing asymptotic techniques to yield a damping rate scaling as gamma approximately nu/epsilon2. For nu much greater than epsilon3, the damping rate is independent of epsilon and scales as gamma approximately nu1/3. The analytical results have been verified numerically using a toroidal resistive MHD stability code.