Plasma convection near the threshold for MHD instability in nonparaxial magnetic confinement systems

Using a highly nonparaxial magnetic confinement system with an internal levitated ring as an example, it is shown that, in a plasma near the threshold for ideal MHD instability, the external heating and the original local dissipative processes may give rise to and maintain self-consistent nonlinear MHD convection, which leads to an essentially nonlocal, enhanced heat transport. A closed set of equations is derived that makes it possible to describe such convective processes in a weakly dissipative plasma with β∼1. Numerical simulations carried out with a specially devised computer code demonstrate that the quasisteady regime of nonlinear convection actually exists and that the marginally stable profile of the plasma pressure is maintained. A large amount of data on the structure of the nascent convective flows is obtained and analyzed.