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Current drive by spheromak injection into a tokamak

M. R. Brown, Paul M. Bellan

Open publisher page 36 citations

Abstract

We report the first observation of current drive by injection of a spheromak plasma into a tokamak (Caltech ENCORE small reasearch tokamak) due to the process of helicity injection. After an abrupt 30% increase, the tokamak current decays by a factor of 3 due to plasma cooling caused by the merging of the relatively cold spheromak with the tokamak. The tokamak density profile peaks sharply due to the injected spheromak plasma (n${\mathrm{\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{}}}_{3}$ increases by a factor of 6) then becomes hollow, suggestive of an interchange instability.

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What this paper is about

We report the first observation of current drive by injection of a spheromak plasma into a tokamak (Caltech ENCORE small reasearch tokamak) due to the process of helicity injection. After an abrupt 30% increase, the tokamak current decays by a factor of 3 due to plasma cooling caused by the merging of the relatively cold spheromak with the tokamak. The tokamak density profile peaks sharply due to the injected spheromak plasma (n${\mathrm{\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{}}}_{3}$ increases by a factor of 6) then becomes hollow, suggestive of an interchange instability.

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OpenAlex reports 36 citations for this work. Citation counts describe recorded attention and do not establish research quality.

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Available abstract

We report the first observation of current drive by injection of a spheromak plasma into a tokamak (Caltech ENCORE small reasearch tokamak) due to the process of helicity injection. After an abrupt 30% increase, the tokamak current decays by a factor of 3 due to plasma cooling caused by the merging of the relatively cold spheromak with the tokamak. The tokamak density profile peaks sharply due to the injected spheromak plasma (n${\mathrm{\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{}}}_{3}$ increases by a factor of 6) then becomes hollow, suggestive of an interchange instability.

Key concepts: Spheromak, Tokamak, Physics, Plasma, Helicity, Current (fluid), BETA (programming language), Atomic physics

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