RMFo-formed collisionless high-β plasmas: Yesterday, today and tomorrow
Author: Samuel A. Cohen
Requested Type: Consider for Invited
Submitted: 2006-12-06 08:38:02
Co-authors: B. Berlinger, C. Brunkhorst, A. Brooks, N. Ferraro, D.P. Lundberg, A. Roach, A.H. Glasser
Contact Info:
PPPL
Forrestal campus, C-site
Princeton, NJ 08540
US
Abstract Text:
The field-reversed configuration (FRC) is a high-β plasma confinement concept that possesses many attractive features favoring its development into a practical fusion reactor. Previous FRCs operated in a collisional regime, far from fusion-reactor conditions. Relying heavily on COTS (commercial, off-the-shelf) hardware, a novel symmetry-preserving odd-parity rotating-magnetic-field (RMFo) heating method, non-invasive diagnostics, and remote divertor chambers, we have achieved a thousand-fold reduction in Coulomb collisionality to ν* = 10-3 while achieving volume-averaged β above 0.5, Te > 100 eV, and full penetration of the RMFo, to the plasma’s major axis. A radiation barrier seen in other RMF/FRC experiments has not been encountered. The scientific motivations for a superconducting next-step RMFo device will be described.
Characterization: A5
Comments:
Concerning the categorization, an RMF-heated FRC provides possesses many advantages, including that listed in A1.
