Dissipative Effects on Stable RFP Configurations

Evolutions of RFP equilibria due to dissipative effects are studied theoretically. It is shown that the existence of stable RFP equilibria satisfying ideal and nonideal MHD stability criteria requires adequate hollow temperature profiles. If no profile control is applied to these RFP equilibria, the sufficient condition of stability for m =1 modes is first violated due to the disappearance of the toroidal current reversal near the surface within a short time.