Hot-ion plasma in a quadrupole confinement system

When the Ambal-Yu mirror machine is filled with plasma from a quasisteady gas-discharge source without auxiliary heating, a hot plasma is obtained with density n ≅ 3·1013 cm-3, ion temperature, Ti ∼ 1 keV, electron temperature, Te, ≥ 50 eV, and β ≅ 6%. When deuterium is used the yield of thermonuclear neutrons in this case was found to be ∼108 neutron/s. When beams of atomic hydrogen (E ≅ 17 keV, I ≅ 100 equiv. A, capture rate ≅5%) were injected into this plasma a population of ultrahot ions developed with average energy 5 keV over a volume of 41. The density of this population averaged over the entire volume increases as long as injection is maintained (200 μs) and ultimately exceeds 3·12 cm-3. 15 refs., 11 figs