Trapping of Gun-Injected Plasma by a Tokamak

A. W. Leonard, R. N. Dexter, and J. C. Sprott
Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706
(Received 14 October 1986; accepted 8 June 1987)

ABSTRACT

It has been seen that a plasma produced by a Marshall gun can be injected into and trapped by a tokamak plasma. This trapping of a gun-injected plasma is explained in terms of a depolarization current mechanism. A model is developed that describes the slowing of a plasma beam crossing into the magnetic field of a tokamak. The slowing down time is shown to go as taus ~ Te^3/2 L^2 / nb ao^2, where nb and Te are the density and temperature of the plasma beam and ao / L is the pitch of the field lines per unit length in the direction in which the beam is traveling. Experimental tests of this model are consistent with the scaling predictions.

Ref: A. W. Leonard, R. N. Dexter, and J. C. Sprott, Phys. Fluids 30, 2877-2884 (1987)

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