Demonstration of plasma startup by coaxial helicity injection.
The first successful results on the transfer of a coaxial helicity injection (CHI) produced discharge to inductive operation are reported. CHI-assisted plasma startup is more robust than inductive only operation. After hand off for inductive operation, the initial 90 kA of CHI-produced current drops to 40 kA, then ramps up to 170 kA, using only 30 mV s, more than 30% higher than that produced by induction alone. These significant performance enhancing results were obtained on the HIT-II spherical torus experiment (major/minor radius of 0.3/0.2 m).
Raman
R
R
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
Jarboe
T R
TR
Nelson
B A
BA
Izzo
V A
VA
O'Neill
R G
RG
Redd
A J
AJ
Smith
R J
RJ