Resistive Diffusion of a High-βFlux-Conserving Equlibrium

The stability of a high-$\beta$ flux-conserving-tokamak equilibrium during resistive magnetic flux diffusion has been studied with use of a fully toroidal transport-equilibrium model coupled to ideal magnetahydrodynamic stability codes. With broad temperature profiles, the stability of $\overline{\beta }=10\%$ equilibria to all ideal magnetohydrodynamic modes can be maintained for as long as the external transformer can supply volt seconds. With narrower temperature profiles, instability may result during the diffusion, but even for these, stability can be reestablished in resistive steady state.