First Results from SHIP Experiment

At present, the GDT facility is being upgraded. The first stage of the upgrade is the Synthesised Hot Ion Plasmoid (SHIP) experiment. It aims, on the one hand, at the investigation of plasmas which are expected to appear in the region of high neutron production in a GDT based fusion neutron source proposed by the Budker Institute and, on the other hand, at the investigation of plasmas the parameters of which have never been achieved before in axisymmetric magnetic mirrors.

The experiment is performed in a small mirror section which is installed at the end of one side of GDT. The magnetic field on axis is in the range of 0.5-2.0 Tesla and the mirror ratio is 1.2-1.4. The mirror is filled with background plasma streaming in from the central cell. This plasma component is maxwellised and has an electron temperature of about 100 eV. Two neutral beam injectors perpendicularly inject a total current of about 50 Atom Amperes of deuterium neutrals with an energy of 20 keV as a pulse with a duration of about 1 ms. Ionisation of the beams generates the high-energy ion component. The device has been equipped with several diagnostic methods which are successfully used in GDT experiments.

The paper presents first results of plasma parameter measurements in SHIP experiment.