Design and Construction of a Dual Turn Density Bitter Magnet for Plasma and Dusty Plasma Experimentation

A Bitter electromagnet under the designation Adjustable Long Pulsed High-Field Apparatus (ALPHA) has been designed and is under construction at the Dusty Plasma Laboratory (DPL), at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). The Bitter Electromagnet Testing Apparatus (BETA), a proof-of-concept model for ALPHA, has been constructed and tested to validate ALPHA’s design methodology and models. ALPHA’s Bitter plates are stacked to generate a mirror ratio slightly above 1 and will have the capacity to produce fields in excess of 7 T, with a bore diameter of 15 cm. Initial planned experiments with ALPHA are short pulse, high field investigations of Paschen-like plasma breakdown in a cylindrical, magnetized configuration, as well as critical ionization velocity limits (CIV) relevant to E x B centrifugal mirror confinement. Details of ALPHA’s construction, measurements of its electrical properties, and planned experiments are presented.