Coalescence of magnetic islands

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Abstract
A detailed numerical analysis has been conducted of the instability described by Finn and Kaw in which parallel currents in neighboring islands tend to coalesce into larger units. The existence of this coalescence instability in the ideal magnetohydrodynamic limit is confirmed, but no evidence is found for a threshold in island width. The linear growth rates are found to be rapid compared with those for purely resistive processes, and the linear mode structure has only a weak dependence on resistivity. In the nonlinear regime, saturation of the mode in the ideal case is observed due to flux piling up at the X point, while in the nonideal case the merging process is observed to proceed to completetion.

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