Nonneutralized charge effects on tokamak edge magnetohydrodynamic stability

Owing to the large ion orbits, excessive electrons can accumulate at tokamak edge. We find that the nonneutralized electrons at tokamak edge can contribute an electric compressive stress in the direction parallel to magnetic field by their mutual repulsive force. By extending the Chew-Goldburger-Low theory (Chew et al., 1956 [13]), it is shown that this newly recognized compressive stress can significantly change the plasma average magnetic well, so that a stabilization of magnetohydrodynamic modes in the pedestal can result. This linear stability regime helps to explain why in certain parameter regimes the tokamak high confinement can be rather quiet as observed experimentally.