USA - WASHU

AEROSPACE AND ENERGETICS RESEARCH PROGRAM
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

AERB Box 352250, Seattle, Washington 98195

Telephone: +1 206 543 6321
Telefax: +1 206 543 4719
E-mail: hoffman@aa.washington.edu
            jarboe@aa.washington.edu
            shumlak@aa.washington.edu

Redmond Plasma Physics Laboratory

Hoffman, Alan L. (Director)
Brooks, Robert D.
Guo, Houyang Y.

Milroy, Richard D.
Pietrzyk, Zbignew A.
Slough, John T.

Steinhauer, Loren C.
Vlases, George T.

AERB Laboratories

Jarboe, Thomas R. (Director)
Nelson, Brian A.

Raman, Roger
Redd, Aaron

Shumlak, Uri

Research activities:
The research activities center around three experimental programs:

1. The Translation Confinement, and Sustainment (TCS) experiment at RPPL is investigating flux build-up and sustainment of Field Reversed configurations (FRC) using Rotating Magnetic Fields (RMF). This facility has generated low temperature FRCs and sustained them for many tens of energy lifetimes. It will be used in the future to study sustainment and flux increase in hot FRCs generated in the normal theta pinch manner from the modified old LSX (Large s Experiment) which are translated and expanded into the quasi steady state TCS device.
2. The Helicity Injected Tokamak (HIT) experiment headed by Prof. Jarboe employs coaxial helicity injection to form and sustain low-aspect-ratio tokamaks without a current drive transformer. This is being investigated as a current drive candidate for a steady-state tokamak and is in support of the NSTX at PPPL. This facility will be converted in 2002 to study a new method of spheromaks sustainment by purely inductive helicity injection.
3. The ZAP experiment is a flow through Z-pinch and is headed by Prof. Uri Shumlak. It is studying the stabilizing properties of flow shear and has already produced z-pinch plasmas stable for many Alfven times while flow shear exists.
4. There are several smaller programs involving numerical MHD code development, plasma space propulsion, plasmoid acceleration for tokamak fueling, and special diagnostics such as a transient internal probe (TIP).