Columbia Non-neutral Torus

摘要

During the duration of this grant, I designed, built, and operated the Columbia Nonneutral Torus, the world's lowest aspect ratio stellarator, and arguably, the world's simplest stellarator. This demonstrates the ease and robustness of the chosen stellarator design and allowed us to commence the investigation of the physics of non-neutral plasmas confined on magnetic surfaces. These plasmas are unique in many ways and had not previously been studied in a stellarator. Our first results showed that it is possible to confine and study a relatively cold pure electron plasma in a stellarator. We confirmed that the plasma is stable, and that the plasma is reasonably well confined in a stellarator configuration. These results were published in Physics of Plasmas (2006) and Physical Review Letters (2006). They enabled the existing program which is resolving the underlying transport processes in a classical stellarator with intense self-electric fields and enable the next phase of operation, electron-positron plasma physics. During the period of this grant, two students were trained in experimental plasma physics and both received their PhD degrees shortly after the grant terminated. One student is now employed in the financial services industry, the other is a postdoctoral associate at Los Alamos National Laboratory.