Study of Hot-Ion Plasma Confinement in the Gas-Dynamic Trap

Studies of hot anisotropic ion confinement is one of the main objectives of the experimental program on the gas-dynamic trap (GDT). Hot ions are produced in the trap by injection of six neutral beams with energy 13-17 keV into collisional target plasma. The total injected power was up to 4.5 MW, pulse duration 1.2 ms. The behavior of hot ions with mean energy 3-10 keV and peak density of 0.5-1.0´ 10¹³ cm^-3 was studied in detail in the experiments with plasma β up to 20%. The method of confinement study consists essentially in comparison of the measured ion parameters with those predicted by computer simulations based on theory of Coulomb collisions. Additionally the measurements of D-D neutron flux were used to measure the hot ion distribution along GDT axis.