Title: Ballooning Modes in Three-dimensional MHD Equilibria with Shear
Abstract: Stability with respect to ballooning modes in arbitrary, three-dimensional, ideal MHD equilibria with shear is studied. The destabilizing perturbations considered here have finite gradients along the field and are localized around a closed magnetic field line, the localization being weaker on the surface than transversally to it. This kind of localization allows the problem of stability to be reduced to the solution of a one-dimensional eigenvalue problem.