Plasma Physics by Alexander Piel

Author:Alexander Piel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Let us now consider the total energy of a small volume of plasma, which consists of kinetic and magnetic energy, which represents the potential energy for this case,

(8.40)

When this plasma volume is shifted into a region of weaker magnetic field, the magnetic energy will decrease accordingly. The existence of such a state of lower potential energy makes the situation unstable. However, we cannot give the detailed mechanism, how the plasma manages to get to this lower energy state. We can only say that the plasma in the center of a mirror field has no stable confinement against radial displacements. Consider now the field line topology of a magnetic cusp in Fig. 8.12b. There, the magnetic field increases in all directions and the plasma is in a stable confinement. Such a situation is called a minimum B configuration.

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