High confinement in fusion oriented plasmas with kV-order potential, ion, and electron temperatures with controlled radial turbulent transport in GAMMA 10
Abstract
The tandem mirror system has achieved improved energy confinement times (> 60-90 ms) with radial transport dominating the Pastukhov axial energy confinement time (> 100 ms). This high confinement regime establishes a proof of principle that the combination of electrostatic and magnetic mirror confinement can successfully insulate electrons from thermal ions. ECH controlled hot-layer formation facilitates plasma-rotation profile formation with a radially localized high-vorticity layer. In the vicinity of the layer, a radial transport barrier is formed [1], showing similar properties to ITB in toroidal plasmas. Coaxially nested intense E(r)xB sheared flow [2] in the GAMMA 10 core plasma realizes an upgraded stable regime having (i) > 0.75 keV bulk central electron temperature with (ii) an achievement of larger stored energy for axially potential-confined ions exceeding that (i.e., diamagnetism) for central magnetically confined ions ( 7 keV). The radially sheared flow having peak-on-axis high vorticity guards and improves whole core plasma confinement, and is controlled by (iii) improved 3 kV ion-confining potential due to simultaneous central and plug ECH. X-ray imaging of the suppression of turbulent structures [1-3] will be shown [1,2].
[1] T. Cho et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 055001 (2006).
[2] T. Cho et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 085002 (2005).
[3] J. Pratt and W. Horton, Phys. Plasmas 13, 042513 (2006).
Collaborators; W. Horton^1, J. Pratt^1, M. Hirata, J. Kohagura, T. Numakura, H. Hojo, M. Ichimura, A. Itakura, T. Kariya, I. Katanuma, R. Minami, Y. Nakashima, M. Yoshikawa, Y. Miyata, Y. Yamaguchi, T. Imai, V. P. Pastukhov^2, S. Miyoshi, GAMMA 10 Group (^1IFS, Univ. Texas at Austin, ^2Kurchatov Institute, Russia)
- Publication:
-
APS Division of Plasma Physics Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- November 2007
- Bibcode:
- 2007APS..DPPGI2006C