We revisit the Hahm-Kulsrud-Taylor (HKT) problem, a classic prototype problem for studying resonant magnetic perturbations and 3D magnetohydrodynamical equilibria. We employ the boundary-layer techniques developed by Rosenbluth, Dagazian, and Rutherford (RDR) for the internal m=1 kink instability, while addressing the subtle…

Quasisymmetric stellarators are an attractive class of optimised magnetic confinement configurations. The property of quasisymmetry (QS) is in practice limited to be approximate, and thus the construction requires measures that quantify the deviation from the exact property. In this paper we study three measure candidates used in the literature…

In the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) stellarator, the vacuum rotational transform, ι, has a flat radial profile and does not cross any major rational resonance. Nevertheless, during plasma operation the ι‐profile can be strongly modified by electron cyclotron current drive in such a way that the resulting ι-profile passes through low-order rational…

It is shown that the resistive magnetohydrodynamic stability of a slab force-free current sheet can be calculated using the variational principle of multi-region relaxed magnetohydrodynamics and that the corresponding stability boundary is in exact agreement with linear tearing mode theory.