Mitarai O, Xiao C, McColl D, Dreval M, Hirose A, Peng M
Liberal Arts Education Center, Kumamoto Campus, Tokai University, 9-1-1 Toroku, Higashi-ku, Kumamoto 862-8652, Japan.
Plasma Physics Laboratory, University of Saskatchewan, 116 Science Place, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5E2, Canada.
Rev Sci Instrum. 2015 Mar;86(3):033508. doi: 10.1063/1.4915316.
A plasma current up to 15 kA has been driven with outer ohmic heating (OH) coils in the STOR-M iron core tokamak. Even when the inner OH coil is disconnected, the outer OH coils alone can induce the plasma current as primary windings and initial breakdown are even easier in this coil layout. This result suggests a possibility to use an iron core in a spherical tokamak to start up the plasma current without a central solenoid. The effect of the iron core saturation on the extension of the discharge pulse length has been estimated for further experiments in the STOR-M tokamak.
在STOR-M铁芯托卡马克装置中，利用外部欧姆加热（OH）线圈驱动出了高达15千安的等离子体电流。即便内部OH线圈断开，仅外部OH线圈就能作为初级绕组感应出等离子体电流，而且在这种线圈布局中初始击穿甚至更容易。这一结果表明在球形托卡马克中使用铁芯来启动等离子体电流而无需中心螺线管存在可能性。已针对STOR-M托卡马克中的进一步实验估算了铁芯饱和对放电脉冲长度延长的影响。
