Spherical stellarator with plasma current

Recently proposed novel concept of a spherical stellarator (P. E. Moroz, ‘‘Spherical stellarator configuration,’’ to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett) is enhanced by adding the plasma current to the otherwise pure stellarator system. The coil configuration of this ultra low aspect ratio system differs from that of a spherical tokamak by inclination of external parts of the toroidal field coils. It is shown that the configuration considered possesses many attractive properties, including: wide flexibility of operating regimes, compact design and coil simplicity, good access to the plasma, closed vacuum flux surfaces with large enclosed volume, significant external rotational transform, strong magnetic well, and a high plasma β [β(0) in excess of 30%] equilibrium. It is shown that the bootstrap effect in a spherical stellarator, in principle, can supply the full plasma current required for the high-β equilibrium.