Energy Confinement of the High ß Two-Component Plasma in the Gas Dynamic Trap

The paper reports on the investigations of the confinement of neutral beam heated, high-ß and two-component plasmas in the Gas Dynamic Trap. The set of diagnostic methods which have been developed enabled the characterization of different energy loss channels. To analyze the plasma heating the energy balance models were applied. The measurements of the local energy and angular distributions of the fast ion minority are described and their results are presented. These measurements were done by injecting a focused, diagnostic neutral beam to produce a local charge-exchange target for the fast ions. The resulting charge-exchange atoms were registered by an electrostatic analyzer. The energy distribution function obtained was compared with the results of Monte Carlo and Fokker-Planck simulations.