Small-scale experimental tests of tandem mirror machines with thermal barriers

A summary is given of current physical understanding of tandem mirrors with thermal barriers. Physicists who understand tandem mirrors can use this document as a preliminary guide to the physical issues and experimental problems involved. This report will focus upon the issues that can be tested experimentally, and on the areas needing experimental and theoretical inventions. The next section discusses the plasma potentials and plasma confinement which correspond to a tandem mirror with thermal barriers, assuming the barriers exist in steady-state. The creation of a barrier is discussed, i.e., the natural tendency of the barrier cell to fill with plasma must be countered by pumping ions out of the barrier. The design of a barrier-pumping experiment for TMX is described