In the axisymmetrized tandem mirror GAMMA 10, thermal-barrier and plug potentials have been formed in the axisymmetric mirror cells at both ends and directly measured with Au neutralbeam probes and end-loss analyzers. Strong end-loss reduction associated with the potential formation results in enhancement of the axial particle confinement time 100 times over the mirror confinement time without plugging, in reasonable agreement with Pastukhov formula. An empirical scaling on nonambipolar radial ion confinement time in the axisymmetrized field configuration is presented.PACS numbers: 52.55.Jd Current tandem mirror researches focus on improvement of confinement properties over the original configuration.
The characteristics of low frequency waves in the presence of E x B rotation of a tandem mirror plasma are investigated using the Fraunhofer diffraction method. The observed dispersion relations are in good agreement with those of drift waves including a Doppler shift due to the E x B rotation velocity. The effect of the radial electric field on the drift waves is studied quantitatively by applying a bias voltage to the end plates of the tandem mirror. The fluctuation level is observed to depend on the radial electric field E r . The fluctuation has a maximum value when E r = 0 and decreases with increasing E r , regardless of its sign. The radial confinement time estimated from the particle balance equation decreases as the fluctuation level increases. The dependence of the fluctuation level agrees with that evaluated from the quasi-linear theory of drift wave turbulence.
Vortexlike turbulent structures in hot-ion mode plasmas with several keV are observed in the case with a radially produced weak shear of electric fields E(r). However, a strong E(r) shear formation due to a high ion-confining potential phi(c) production clears up these vortices together with plasma-confinement improvement and disappearance of both drift-wave and turbulencelike Fourier spectral signals. These findings are based on three-time progress in phi(c) in comparison to phi(c) attained 1992-2002. The significant advance of phi(c) is well extended in line with proposed potential-formation physics scalings.
A new method of plasma density profile reconstruction in microwave reflectometry is proposed and implemented on an X-mode broadband reflectometer of the GAMMA 10 mirror device with an ultrafast sweep rate of 10–20 μs. The proposed method makes use of the wavelet transform of the detected signal. Excellent resolution in the time-frequency domain, inherent to wavelet analysis, allows one to obtain a radial electron density profile for every frequency sweep. The electron density reconstruction algorithm, besides the wavelet transform of the reflectometer signal, also includes the calibration, profile initialization, and the solution of an integral equation, ultimately yielding the local values of the electron density. Calibration of the measured signal phase and profile initialization is performed using the independent results of microwave interferometry. Inversion of the integral equation is implemented utilizing the gradient method, numerically stable even for plasma regions with steep density gradients and density profile plateaus. A wavelet-based profile reconstruction algorithm is especially advantageous for monitoring transient plasma phenomena and fast processes, such as in pellet injection, ultrafast swept reflectometry, and short pulsed reflectometry.
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