Spontaneous multi-keV electron generation in a low-RF-power axisymmetric mirror machine

Swanson, C. ; Cohen, S. A.
Issue date: 2019
Rights:
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY)
Cite as:
Swanson, C. & Cohen, S. A. (2019). Spontaneous multi-keV electron generation in a low-RF-power axisymmetric mirror machine [Data set]. Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University. https://doi.org/10.11578/1562006
@electronic{swanson_c_2019,
  author      = {Swanson, C. and
                Cohen, S. A.},
  title       = {{Spontaneous multi-keV electron generatio
                n in a low-RF-power axisymmetric mirror
                machine}},
  publisher   = {{Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Pri
                nceton University}},
  year        = 2019,
  url         = {https://doi.org/10.11578/1562006}
}
Description:

Title: Spontaneous multi-keV electron generation in a low-RF-power axisymmetric mirror machine Abstract: X-ray emission shows the existence of multi-keV electrons in low-temperature, low-power, capacitively-coupled RF-heated magnetic-mirror plasmas that also contain a warm (300 eV) minority electron population. Though these warm electrons are initially passing particles, we suggest that collisionless scattering -- mu non-conservation in the static vacuum field -- is responsible for a minority of them to persist in the mirror cell for thousands of transits during which time a fraction are energized to a characteristic temperature of 3 keV, with some electrons reaching energies above 30 keV. A heuristic model of the heating by a Fermi-acceleration-like mechanism is presented, with mu non-conservation in the static vacuum field as an essential feature.

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