Effect of anisotropic pressure on the localized magnetohydrodynamic interchange modes in an axisymmetric torus

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Abstract
The familiar q≳1 criterion (where q is the safety factor) for the stability of tokamak equilibria against localized interchanges, was derived for an isotropic pressure toroidal plasma. The present importance of neutral injection techniques and also the evidence of significant numbers of runaway electrons in some experiments both lead to an interest in plasmas with anisotropic pressure. The stability criterion appropriate to such a plasma in a general axisymmetric toroidal geometry is developed basing the analysis on the kinetic energy principle. The general result is applied to a discussion of perpendicular and parallel neutral injection in a large aspect ratio torus and also to the effect of runaway electrons.