Boundary induced amplification and nonlinear instability of interchange modes

Abstract: It is shown that small distortions on the boundaries are amplified in the core of a magnetized plasma if the system is close to marginal stability for the ideal magnetohydrodynamic interchange mode. It is also shown that such marginal systems can be nonlinearly unstable. The combination of boundary amplification and nonlinearity is shown to result in a nonlinear instability. The induced instability is highly sensitive to the boundary in that, if the fractional deviation from marginality is a small parameter $b$, the system can go unstable from fractional boundary distortions of $\mathcal{O}(b^{3/2})$.