Numerical computation of the helical Chandrasekhar-Kendall modes (Q630313)

The solution to the eigenvalue problem of a force-free magnetic field yields Chandrasekhar-Kendall modes for prescribed boundary conditions. The author develops a numerical procedure of solving the corresponding differential equation for a helical force-free magnetic field that explicitly enforces the divergence free condition in the course of computation based on the second order finite difference scheme. The numerical example treats an axisymmetric torus and shows plots of the resulted helical eigenmodes, their properties and the accuracy of the applied computational procedure.