Steady state drift vortices in plasmas with shear flow in equilibrium

The Hasegawa-Mima equation in the presence of sheared poloidal flow is solv ed for two-dimensional steady state vortex. It is shown that when the phase velocity of the vortex is the same as the diamagnetic drift velocity, an e xact solution in the form of counter-rotating vortices may appear. In the s mall amplitude limit near the origin this solution reduces to a localized L amb-dipole. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S1070-664X(99)01301-4] .