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S. Okada, K. Kitano, H. Matsumoto,
K. Yamanaka, T. Ohtsuka, A. K. Martin, M. Okubo,
S. Yoshimura, S. Sugimoto, S. Ohi, S. Goto
Plasma Physics Laboratory Faculty of Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
Abstract. A new concept for plasma heating using
axial magnetic compression of a field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasma is
proposed. In this concept, the FRC plasma is compressed only axially, keeping
the magnetic flux between the separatrix and the confining chamber (flux
conserver) wall unchanged, while allowing the plasma to expand radially. A
simple model based on an empirical scaling law of FRC confinement and on the
assumption that the compression is done adiabatically, predicts that in
addition to heating the plasma, confinement improvement will also be
accomplished with this concept. This compression will be done by energizing
segmented mirror coils successively in such a way to decrease the length of
the confinement region between mirror coils. The apparatus for this axial
compression was developed and an experiment was carried out. In this
experiment the plasma was compressed by about 30% and the plasma life time of
about 500
s was increased by about 50s.
IAEA 2001
