What is it about?
We have constructed the smallest tokamak in the world, which confines plasma magnetically. Energy stored in the tokamak plasma is evaluated as well as plasma heating power, radiation power from plasma, and other power loss processes. Those values are deduced from spectroscopic measurement of temperature and density of the plasma.
Featured Image
Photo by Hassan OUAJBIR on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The tokamak is the smallest in the world, major radius of which is 0.1 m. Measurement of the temperature and density for such small tokamaks was difficult. We propose a reliable combined spectroscopic scheme to overcome the difficulty. The result shows that confinement characteristics is comparable with that deduced from an empirical law applicable to larger tokamak plasmas, suggesting the same physics in such a small plasma.
Perspectives
I hope this article makes someone develop smaller tokamak than this article. While larger tokamak plasmas will be used for energy source as nuclear fusion reactor, smaller tokamak plasmas can be used for novel light sources.
Dr. Atsushi Okamoto
Nagoya University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Power balance in the smallest tokamak, AIP Advances, April 2022, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0085770.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
