Containment of plasmas at thermonuclear temperatures

A method and apparatus for heating and compressing plasma. The plasma is injected into a vacuum chamber located within a primary containment magnetic field. The injected plasma is inductively energized by means coaxial with and contained in the primary magnetic field to generate ringlike toroidal plasma vortex structures moving toward collision with each other in the chamber along an axis extending in a direction parallel to the primary containment magnetic field. The plasmoids are additionally compressed as they approach collision, also by means coaxial with and contained in the primary containment magnetic field. The toroidal plasma structures collide inside the primary magnetic field of bottle. The interaction caused by the collision generates a ''septum region'' consisting of a magnetic barrier which serves to separate the two colliding ring structures and keeps them from interacting destructively. The septum barrier also serves as a screen which allows collision of fast ions at the center of the region between the structures, while the electrons follow the magnetic force lines of the barrier and are shunted back into the structures