Confinement and heating of a deuterium-tritium plasma

Abstract

The Tomamak Fusion Test reactor has performed initial high-power experiments with the plasma fueled with nominally equal densities of deuterium and tritium. Compared to pure deuterium plasmas, the energy stored in the electron and ions increased by \ensuremath{\sim}20%. These increases indicate improvements in confinement associated with the use of tritium and possibly heating of electrons by \ensuremath{\alpha} particles created by the D-T fusion reactions.