Improved confinement and current drive of high temperature field reversed configurations in the new translation, confinement, and sustainment upgrade device

Abstract

Previous work in the translation, confinement, and sustainment (TCS) device [Hoffman, Guo, Slough et al., Fusion Sci. Technol. 41, 92 (2002)] demonstrated formation and steady-state sustainment of field reversed configurations (FRC) by rotating magnetic fields (RMF). However, in TCS the plasma temperature was limited to several 10s of eV due to high impurity content. These impurities are greatly reduced in the new TCS upgrade device (TCSU), which was built with a bakable, ultrahigh vacuum chamber, and advanced wall conditioning capabilities. This led to dramatic improvements in TCSU with temperatures well over 200eV, using simple even-parity RMF drive. The higher temperatures, coupled with reduced recycling, allowed plasma to enter into a collisionless, high-ζ (ratio of average electron rotation frequency to RMF frequency) regime. These new FRC states exhibit the following key features: (1) Dramatic improvement in current drive efficiency with ζ approaching 100%, for the first time in TCSU; (2) up to threefold increase in global energy confinement time; and (3) significant reduction in transport rates, accompanied by a striking transition from a Bohm-type transport to a lower hybrid driftlike transport that scales better than gyro-Bohm and is very favorable for the next step FRC development.