Long lived Taylor states in SSX for magneto-inertial fusion

Our recent focus has been on increasing the magnetic lifetime of compressed Taylor state plasmas at SSX $[1]$ primarily by focussing attention on the electron temperature. We have installed a new tungsten coated copper flux conserver to reduce sputtering and provide a clean plasma facing surface. We estimate $T_e$ with a vacuum ultraviolet spectrometer measurement of the ratio of the $C_{III}~97.7~nm$ to $C_{IV}~155~nm$ line intensities $[2]$. A preliminary measurement has $T_e \sim 10~eV$. We bake and glow discharge clean the vacuum surface to remove adsorbed contaminants. Our current measured parameters include velocity ($40~km/s$), density ($0.5 \times 10^{16}~cm^{-3}$), proton temperature ($20~eV$), and magnetic field ($0.4~T$) of relaxed helical Taylor states in the new flux conserver.

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$[1]$ T. Gray \textit{et. al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 085002 (2013).

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$[2]$ V. Chaplin \textit{et. al.}, Phys. Plasmas 16, 042505 (2009).