Plasma knots

We present a Lagrangian method for the computation of ideal plasma knots and links. It is based on a variational principle for stable equilibria of an ideal plasma in the case of a free boundary subjected to external magnetic or plasma pressure forces. For this purpose, we introduce a structure preserving discretization of plasma based on decompositions of Riemannian manifolds representing pressure confined plasma regions in magnetohydrostatic equilibrium. Moreover, we show that, by the virtue of an analogy, the method can be used for the approximation of steady Euler-flows of arbitrarily complex topology.& COPY; 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.