title: Magnetic geometry and the confinement of electrically conducting plasmas
abstract: We develop an effective field theory approach to inspect the electromagnetic interactions in an electrically neutral plasma, with an equal number of negative and positive charge carriers. We argue that the static equilibrium configurations within the plasma are topologically stable solitons that describe knotted and linked flux tubes of helical magnetic fields.
authors.affiliation: St. Petersburg Branch of Steklov Mathematical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Fontanka 27, St. Petersburg, Russia and Helsinki Institute of Physics, P.O. Box 9, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Faddeev
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Niemi