Confinement of Toroidal Non-neutral Plasma in Proto-RT
- Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8583 (Japan)
In contrast to linear configurations for non-neutral plasmas, toroidal devices allow us to trap charged particles without the use of a plugging electric field. Thus it has a potential ability to confine high-energy particles or to simultaneously trap multiple particles with different charges. In spite of the relatively long history of the study in pure toroidal magnetic field devices, toroidal non-neutral plasmas are attracting renewed interest with the use of magnetic surface configurations. Possible applications of toroidal traps for non-neutral plasmas are formation of matter-antimatter plasmas, investigation on the fundamental properties of exotic plasmas including pair (equal mass) plasmas, and experimental test on the equilibrium and stability of flowing plasmas. As an initial test on non-neutral plasmas in the toroidal magnetic-surface geometry, formation and confinement properties of pure electron plasma have been investigated at Prototype-Ring Trap (Proto-RT) device with a dipole magnetic field. Electrons can be injected by using chaotic orbit near a magnetic null line generated by the combination of dipole and vertical magnetic fields. The confinement time of electrons is limited due to the effects of collisions with remaining neutral gas, and electrons of {approx} 1012 are trapped for {approx} 0.5 s in the typical magnetic field strength of 100 G and back pressure of 4 x 10-7 Torr in Proto-RT. Although the present experiment was carried out on the single-component plasma, the result shows that a stable confinement configuration has been realized for toroidal non-neutral plasmas by using the magnetic surface configuration. Together with the experiment on the toroidal pure electron plasma in Proto-RT, preliminary prospects for the injection and trap of anti-protons and positrons in the toroidal magnetic surface configuration, and creation of multi-component plasmas will be described.
- OSTI ID:
- 20726639
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 793, Issue 1; Conference: Workshop on physics with ultra slow antiproton beams, Wako (Japan), 14-16 Mar 2005; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2121999; (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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