Experimental verification of the MHD perpendicular dielectric constant of a magnetized rotating plasma on MCX
Abstract
Direct measurements document that the plasma perpendicular dielectric has a linear dependency on the plasma density in the MHD limit (silon _ii, silon _eN, silon _iN, ω <<ω c and λ _D, ρ _i << L) for fixed magnetic field. Experiments were performed in the Maryland Centrifugal Experiment (MCX), a device conceived to study plasma centrifugal confinement, in which both the magnetic field and the perpendicular electric field were maintained constant. In MCX, measured ion temperature is around 30 eV, electron temperature is approximately 20 eV and azimuthal velocity ranges between 100 and 200 km/s. Line averaged hydrogen-plasma electron density was measured using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer which incorporated a HeNe laser of wavelength 632.8 nm. For small Alfven Mach numbers, the absolute value of the perpendicular plasma dielectric constant was verified experimentally with very good accuracy. Plasma density of (1-8)× 10^20 m-3 and relative perpendicular plasma dielectric constant around 10^6 were determined.
- Publication:
-
APS Division of Plasma Physics Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- November 2004
- Bibcode:
- 2004APS..DPPBP1128T