Confinement of Nonneutral Plasmas in the Prototype Ring Trap Device

Recently, an internal-ring device named Proto-RT (Prototype Ring Trap) was constructed at University of Tokyo, and experiments on the device have been intensively conducted. The main goal of Proto-RT is to explore an innovative method to attain a plasma equilibrium with extremely high-β (β>1) in a toroidal geometry using non-neutral condition. At the first series of the experiments, pure electron plasmas (ne∼1013 m−3) have been successfully confined inside a separatrix. No disruption is so far observed. The confinement time of the electron plasmas is of order 0.1 ms for an X point configuration. The non-neutrality of Δne∼1013 m−3 is already beyond the critical value which is required to produce an enough self-electric field E in non-neutral plasmas with n0∼1019 m−3, causing a strong E×B flow thoroughly over the plasmas where the hydrodynamic pressure of the flow is predicted to balance with the thermal pressure of the plasmas.