Kinetic treatments of drift tearing modes that match an inner, resonant layer solution to an external magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) solution, characterised by $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}^{\prime }$ , can fail to match the ideal… Click to show full abstract
Kinetic treatments of drift tearing modes that match an inner, resonant layer solution to an external magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) solution, characterised by $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}^{\prime }$ , can fail to match the ideal MHD boundary condition on the parallel electric field, $E_{\Vert }=0$ . In this paper we demonstrate how consideration of ion sound and ion Landau damping effects achieves this, placing the theory on a firm footing. These effects are found to modify the effective critical $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}^{\prime }$ for instability of drift tearing modes, in particular for weak electron temperature gradients. The implications for a realistic hot plasma resonant layer model – involving large ion Larmor radius and semi-collisional electron physics (Connor et al., Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion, vol. 54, 2012, 035003) – are determined.
               
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