High-speed measurement of time-dependent temperature variation of MHD plasma and elucidating the MHD turbulent flow

The space-dependent plasma temperature profile in the bounday layer within the channel of a combustion MHD generator with an exernally applied magnetic field was measured by means of a newly devised method using a light-polarization line-reversal technique. The measurements were performed at four hundred positions across the boundary layer during a period of 0.4 ms. The spatial distribution of temperature thus obtained indicated the 1/7-th or 1/8-th power of the temperature. The maximum entropy method (MEM) was applied to time-Series data. A deviation of k-dependent power spectral densitiesfrom kolmogoroff's k-5/3-law was found in the inertial subrange (k: wave number) due to the effect of the strong magnetic field on the plasma turbulent flow. (author)