Pressure effect on equilibrium configuration of CTCC-2 spheromak

In CTCC-2 experiment, the initial plasma is produced by a magnetized gun and ejected into a metallic aluminum flux conserver (FC) with thickness of 15 mm. The spheromak is formed in the FC during a life time of 1.5 ms, in which the plasma is isolated from any external feeder. A choking-field-generating coil is equipped on the entrance of the spheroidal FC. The choking field is suppressing some leakage of spheromak field along the entrance duct, which is made of thin stainless steel plate (0.8 mm) for rapid penetration of the choking magnetic field. This resistive part acts as an effective plasma current limiter, which produces stable currentless region (flux hole). The flux hole increases magnetic shear without inserting a central conducting pole along the symmetric axis and is controlled to decrease with the choking field strength. Thus, in CTCC-2 spheromak, a stable oblate spheroidal boundary is rigidly fixed by the metal wall of FC and the entrance hole of FC is effectively closed by choking magnetic field, so that it is suitable to investigate precisely a fine structure of configuration. In spheromak configuration whose aspect ratio is near one, the ratio of the magnetic strength at the inner part to that at the outer part on equi-flux surface (mirror ratio) becomes very large in comparison with that of a large aspect ratio. This extreme configuration with a high mirror ratio may be associated with an anisotropic pressure effect even in collisional state like as our experimental condition. They have investigated the pressure effect on spheromak configuration in more detail. The obtained equilibrium profile is grossly explained by a theoretical profile on assuming low beta limit until now. However, the authors observe a systematic discrepancy between a measured poloidal profile and a theoretical one as mentioned