Formation of a long-lived hot field reversed configuration by dynamically merging two colliding high-β compact toroids

• Published in: Physics of plasmas 2011-05, Vol.18 (5), p.056110-056110-10
• Main Authors: Guo, H. Y., Binderbauer, M. W., Barnes, D., Putvinski, S., Rostoker, N., Sevier, L., Tuszewski, M., Anderson, M. G., Andow, R., Bonelli, L., Brandi, F., Brown, R., Bui, D. Q., Bystritskii, V., Ceccherini, F., Clary, R., Cheung, A. H., Conroy, K. D., Deng, B. H., Dettrick, S. A., Douglass, J. D., Feng, P., Galeotti, L., Garate, E., Giammanco, F., Glass, F. J., Gornostaeva, O., Gota, H., Gupta, D., Gupta, S., Kinley, J. S., Knapp, K., Korepanov, S., Hollins, M., Isakov, I., Jose, V. A., Li, X. L., Luo, Y., Marsili, P., Mendoza, R., Meekins, M., Mok, Y., Necas, A., Paganini, E., Pegoraro, F., Pousa-Hijos, R., Primavera, S., Ruskov, E., Qerushi, A., Schmitz, L., Schroeder, J. H., Sibley, A., Smirnov, A., Song, Y., Steinhauer, L. C., Sun, X., Thompson, M. C., Van Drie, A. D., Walters, J. K., Wyman, M. D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1070-664X; 1089-7674
• DOI: 10.1063/1.3574380

A high temperature field reversed configuration (FRC) has been produced in the newly built, world's largest compact toroid (CT) facility, C-2, by colliding and merging two high-β CTs produced using the advanced field-reversed θ-pinch technology. This long-lived, stable merged state exhibits the following key properties: (1) apparent increase in the poloidal flux from the first pass to the final merged state, (2) significantly improved confinement compared to conventional θ-pinch FRCs with flux decay rates approaching classical values in some cases, (3) strong conversion from kinetic energy into thermal energy with total temperature ( T e + T i ) exceeding 0.5 keV, predominantly into the ion channel. Detailed modeling using a new 2-D resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) code, LamyRidge, has demonstrated, for the first time, the formation, translation, and merging/reconnection dynamics of such extremely high-β plasmas.