RF Plasma Heating in Toroidal Fusion Devices

"RF Plasma Heating in Toroidal Fusion Devices" by V.I. Fedorov, V.E. Golant is a astronomy book and space science reference focused on General Astronomy. Best for students, researchers, and serious astronomy enthusiasts.

Topic: General Astronomy

Author: V.I. Fedorov, V.E. Golant

Who this is for:

• Astronomy students
• Researchers and advanced hobbyists
• Readers exploring space science topics

Why this book matters: It matters because it helps readers build a stronger understanding of astronomy concepts, observations, and scientific ideas related to space.

Because of recent progress in the development of quasistationary toroidal mag­ netic confinement systems, especially tokamaks, these systems are at the center of research on controlled thermonuclear fusion. Tokamaks were proposed and first built at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. In the 1960s the basic features of plasma behavior in toroidal magnetic confinement systems were investigated in ex­ periments on the first tokamaks and the possibility of obtaining effective confine­ ment in them was demonstrated. The successes of this first stage led to a rapid ex­ pansion in tokamak research around the world. The development of a thermonu­ clear power reactor based on the tokamak is now actively under way. During the earliest phase of research on tokamaks, it was already clear that the ohmic heating used in them was not sufficient to obtain the temperatures needed for initiation of a self-sustaining thermonuclear reaction. At the beginning of the 1970s, therefore, a search was begun for methods of heating which could supple­ ment ohmic heating. The best of these auxiliary heating techniques are neutral beam injection, various methods based on the collisionless absorption of rf (radio fre­ quency) waves, and adiabatic compression of the plasma by a rising magnetic field.