Plasma Start-up in HIT-II and NSTX Using Transient Coaxial Helicity Injection

摘要

The method of transient coaxial helicity injection (CHI) has previously been used in the HIT-II experiment at the University of Washington to produce 100 kA of closed flux current. The generation of the plasma current by CHI involves the process of magnetic reconnection, which has been experimentally controlled in the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to allow this potentially unstable phenomenon to reorganize the magnetic field lines to form closed, nested magnetic surfaces carrying a plasma current up to 160 kA. This is a world record for non-inductive closed-flux current generation, and demonstrates the high current capability of this method.