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Poloidal field amplification in a coaxial compact toroid accelerator

R.D. Horton, D.Q. Hwang, S. Howard, S.J. Brockington and R.W. Evans

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The Compact Toroid Injection Experiment (CTIX) produces spheromak-like compact toroids (SCTs) without external power switching, initiating a discharge by pulsed gas injection into a formation region containing a seed magnetic field generated by a solenoidal coil. After formation, the plasma is driven by an inductively delayed capacitor bank into an acceleration region, where surface axial and toroidal magnetic fields are measured at several axial positions. Due to strong eddy-current effects, formation-region magnetic field cannot be simply computed; instead, it is measured using the response of axial and radial test coils in the formation region to short solenoid test current pulses. A temporal and spatial reconstruction method is developed allowing formation-region field to be computed from the test-coil data for any CTIX discharge of identical solenoid geometry. By varying the peak value and timing of solenoidal current, curves of peak accelerator-region field as a function of initial formation-region field are developed. Curves of peak accelerator-region axial magnetic field are thereby found to be highly nonlinear functions of formation-region field, showing a threshold value for the formation-region field of approximately 5 G, above which acceleration-region field saturates at values between 2 and 12 kG. The direction of acceleration-region axial field reverses sign when the direction of solenoid current is reversed. Saturated accelerator-region axial field is a function of axial position and accelerator voltage, and is typically comparable to toroidal field at the same location. The ratio of accelerator-region to formation-region axial field commonly exceeds 1000 near the onset of saturation. This large amplification is of practical advantage for delayed plasma breakdown on CTIX, allowing a modest seed field to produce high poloidal fields, which are necessary for intense SCT acceleration. The results may also provide a useful benchmark for numerical simulation of the conversion of abundant toroidal field into poloidal field in a plasma with comparatively low dissipation.


PACS

52.55.Hc Stellarators, torsatrons, heliacs, bumpy tori, and other toroidal confinement devices

52.75.-d Plasma devices

52.55.Ip Spheromaks

52.65.-y Plasma simulation

Subjects

Plasma physics

Dates

Issue 9 (September 2008)

Received 6 February 2008, accepted for publication 30 June 2008

Published 6 August 2008



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