Transport of high fluxes of hydrogen plasma in a linear plasma generator

摘要

A study was made to quantify the losses during the convective hydrogen plasma transport in thelinear plasma generator Pilot-PSI due to volume recombination. A transport efficiency of 35% wasachieved at neutral background pressures below ～7 Pa in a magnetic field of 1.2 T. This efficiencydecreased to essentially zero at higher pressures. At 1.6 T, the measured downstream plasmadensity was up to double the upstream density. Apparently plasma pumping and recycling at thetarget start to play a role under these increased confinement conditions. Feeding the plasma columnat this field strength with a net current did not change the downstream density. This indicates thatrecycling sets the local plasma conditions.