Behavior of a Tracer-Containing Compact Toroid in a Transverse Magnetic Field

Abstract

Studying impurity behavior in a magnetically confined plasma is essential for fusion reactor developments. A tracer-containing compact toroid (TCCT) injection have been developed as a new tracer injection technique for studying impurity accumulation and behavior in magnetically confined fusion plasmas. We generated and ejected the TCCT using a compact toroid (CT) injector that had successfully demonstrated CT injection fueling into a large field-reversed configuration (FRC). Tracer ions, e.g., tungsten, copper, and aluminum, are supplied by an independently controlled tracer source attached to the CT injector. The plasma containing tracer ions is accelerated and ejected by Lorentz self-force as the TCCT. To investigate whether tracer ions can be injected into the plasma without separation from the TCCT, we experiment by injecting the TCCT injection into a transverse magnetic field, emulating a confinement magnetic field of the FRC plasma.