Drifts, boundary conditions and convection on open field lines

In a number of plasmas of practical interest, including the scrape-off layer of a tokamak with a divertor or toroidal limiter, some gas discharge devices, and in the vicinity of spacecraft, magnetic field lines intersect bounding surfaces at shallow angles. Under these circumstances a number of inte...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physics of Plasmas 1999-05, Vol.6 (5), p.1995-2001
Main Authors: Cohen, Ronald H., Ryutov, Dmitri
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In a number of plasmas of practical interest, including the scrape-off layer of a tokamak with a divertor or toroidal limiter, some gas discharge devices, and in the vicinity of spacecraft, magnetic field lines intersect bounding surfaces at shallow angles. Under these circumstances a number of interesting and important effects arise. Drifts can compete with parallel flows in establishing the boundary conditions for plasma mass-flow and current (sheath current–voltage characteristics). This paper derives the mass-flow constraints including both poloidal and radial drifts, reviews the current boundary conditions, and surveys the consequences, including along-field density and heat-flux asymmetries, convection created by a wavy surface, generation of electric fields, and surface currents associated with shadows from surface structures, and modification of instability growth rates.
ISSN:1070-664X
1089-7674
DOI:10.1063/1.873455