Global stability of the ballooning mode in a cylindrical model

Ballooning disturbances in a finite-pressure plasma in a curvilinear magnetic field are described by the system of coupled equations for the Alfvén and slow magnetosonic modes. In contrast to most previous works that locally analyzed the stability of small-scale disturbances using the dispersion relationship, a global analysis outside a WKB approximation but within a simple cylindrical geometry, when magnetic field lines are circles with constant curvature, is performed in the present work. This model is relatively simple; nevertheless, it has the singularities necessary for the formation of the ballooning mode: field curvature and non-uniform thermal plasma pressure. If the disturbance finite radial extent is taken into account, the instability threshold increases as compared to a WKB approximation. The simplified model used in this work made it possible to consider the pattern of unstable disturbances at arbitrary values of the azimuthal wavenumber (k _y ). Azimuthally large-scale disturbances can also be unstable, although the increment increases with decreasing azimuthal scale and reaches saturation when the scales are of the order of the pressure nonuniformity dimension.