Transportation of cold plasma jet in multiple-mirror magnetic field

• Main Authors: I. A. Ivanov, V. I. Batkin, A. V. Burdakov, V. S. Burmasov, K. N. Kuklin, K. I. Mekler, S. V. Polosatkin, V. V. Postupaev, E. N. Sidorov, A. F. Rovenskikh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIP Publishing LLC 2017-12-01
• Series: AIP Advances
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.5009528

New experimental results on magnetic compression and transport of low-temperature arc plasma are presented. In the experiments, the transport efficiency of the plasma stream in a multiple-mirror configuration was compared with the same in a uniform solenoidal field. The magnetic compression ratio of the plasma stream varied from 5 to 60 at the initial diameter of 5 cm. As the result, the plasma with (1 – 4)×1020 m-3 density at the axis was obtained at ∼3 m distance from the plasma source. Theory predicted that a multiple-mirror magnetic field should not significantly decelerate and weaken collisional plasma. The experiment confirmed this prediction. In the presented work, we simulated the baseline scenario of GOL-NB filling by cold start plasma.