BIFURCATIONS OF STATIONARY TEARING MODES WITH A RESISTIVITY DEPENDINGON A FLUX FUNCTION

We consider plasma tearing mode instabilities when the resistivity dep ends on a flux function (psi), for the plane slab model. This problem, represented by MHD equations, is studied as a bifurcation problem. Fo r so doing, it is written in the form (I - T(S,.)), where T(S,.) is a compact operator in a suitable space and S is the bifurcation paramete r. In this work, the resistivity is not assumed to be a given quantity (as usually done in previous papers), but it depends nonlinearly of t he unknowns of the problem; this is the main difficulty, with new math ematical results. We also develop in this paper a 1-D code to compute bifurcation points from the trivial branch (equilibrium state). (C) 19 98 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.