

The hypothesis that the Resistive Wall Mode (RWM) can be stabilized by high-speed differentially rotating conducting walls is tested in the laboratory. A solid rotating wall capable of routine operation at speeds of 300 km/h, equivalent to a magnetic Reynolds number of 5, was designed, assembled, and fielded. Fast wall rotation is found to decrease the RWM growth rate and increase the RWM stable operation window to higher plasma current, thus demonstrating the stabilizing effect of the wall. The interaction of the rotating wall with non-axisymmetric fields (error fields) is found to lead to asymmetries in wall rotation direction. Analytic theory is used to demonstrate that as wall rotation increases the error field is not necessarily shielded but can instead destabilize the RWM. Error fields are also found to mediate MHD mode-locking bifurcations, which are observed for the first time in a linear plasma column. A torque balance model which includes the effect of the error field, plasma rotation, and wall rotation is developed and used to explain the observed phenomenology.
