Dynamics of large-scale magnetically rotating arc plasmas

摘要

Arc channels tend to shrink mainly due to the fact that the plasma conductivity naturally increases with its temperature. In this letter, we report a method of generating a large area homogeneous arc plasma at atmospheric pressure. The plasma generator consists of an 80 mm diameter graphite anode chamber and an 18 mm diameter concentric graphite cathode. A solenoid coil is used to produce a magnetic field along the electrode axis. In the chamber, the arc plasma is observed in various configurations and temporally and spatially evolves from a contractive column to diffuse plasma cloud which fills the entire chamber cross section.