title: Plasma current start-up by the outer ohmic heating coils in the Saskatchewan TORus Modified (STOR-M) iron core tokamak.
abstract: A plasma current up to 15 kA has been driven with outer ohmic heating (OH) coils in the STOR-M iron core tokamak. Even when the inner OH coil is disconnected, the outer OH coils alone can induce the plasma current as primary windings and initial breakdown are even easier in this coil layout. This result suggests a possibility to use an iron core in a spherical tokamak to start up the plasma current without a central solenoid. The effect of the iron core saturation on the extension of the discharge pulse length has been estimated for further experiments in the STOR-M tokamak.
authors.affiliation: Liberal Arts Education Center, Kumamoto Campus, Tokai University, 9-1-1 Toroku, Higashi-ku, Kumamoto 862-8652, Japan.
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Mitarai
authors.affiliation: Plasma Physics Laboratory, University of Saskatchewan, 116 Science Place, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5E2, Canada.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: Plasma Physics Laboratory, University of Saskatchewan, 116 Science Place, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5E2, Canada.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: McColl
authors.affiliation: Plasma Physics Laboratory, University of Saskatchewan, 116 Science Place, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5E2, Canada.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dreval
authors.affiliation: Plasma Physics Laboratory, University of Saskatchewan, 116 Science Place, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5E2, Canada.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hirose
authors.affiliation: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Peng