Printed in Great Britain Bifurcation of the resistive Alfven wave spectrum

A phase integral (WKBJ) theory of damped modes in a resistive cylindrical plasma column is developed. The theory predicts several phenomena observed previously in numerical studies: (i) the complex frequency w has a point spectrum lying on a locus which is approximately independent of the resistivity, and which intersects the ideal continuum only at its end points (at angles of 45 ° and 30°); (ii) the qualitative features are independent of current profile and m-number, provided | k.B | is monotonic and strictly positive; and (iii) the two branches of the spectral locus joining the two end points of the ideal continuum correspon