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M. Inomoto, Y. Ueda, Y. Ono, T. Murakami,
M. Tsuruda, M. Yamada1, M. Katsurai
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1
Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan
1 Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University,
P. O. Box 451, Princeton, NJ 08543
Abstract. Novel high-power heating experiment of compact torus (CT) has been
developed in the TS devices by use of merging effects. This method enables us
to inject whole magnetic and thermal energies of a colliding CT into a target
CT within short reconnection time. The maximum heating power of 10MW was
obtained in our initial low-field (0.3-0.8kG) and small-scale (R < 0.2m)
experiment. This heating energy is provided mostly by ion acceleration effect
of magnetic reconnection. The q-value of the target CT was varied continuously
from low-q reversed-field pinch (RFP) region (q»0.2) to high-q spherical
tokamak (ST) region (q 
30). The ion heating energy as well as the
merging speed increases with decreasing the q-value (
Bt component) of
two toroids and with increasing their external compressing force of current
sheet. The most probable interpretation for these phenomena is that
unmagnetized ion motion causes the anomalous dissipation of the current sheet
when it is compressed shorter than its ion gyroradius. The merging process
causes the 
-values of CTs to increase by factor 2-3 and the
increment increases with increasing the q-value of CT.
IAEA 2001
