Ion and electron heating characteristics of magnetic reconnection in tokamak plasma merging experiments
Date
2012
Authors
Ono, Y.
Tanabe, H.
Yamada, T.
Inomoto, M.
Li, T.
Inoue, S.
Gi, K.
Watanabe, T.
Gryaznevich, M.
Scannell, R.
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Volume Title
Publisher
Institute of Physics Publishing
Abstract
Recently, the TS-3 and TS-4 tokamak merging experiments revealed significant plasma heating during magnetic reconnection. A key question is how and where ions and electrons are heated during magnetic reconnection. Two-dimensional measurements of ion and electron temperatures and plasma flow made clear that electrons are heated inside the current sheet mainly by the Ohmic heating and ions are heated in the downstream areas mainly by the reconnection outflows. The outflow kinetic energy is thermalized by the fast shock formation and viscous damping. The magnetic reconnection converts the reconnecting magnetic field energy mostly to the ion thermal energy in the outflow region whose size is much larger than the current sheet size for electron heating. The ion heating energy is proportional to the square of the reconnection magnetic field component B2p.This scaling of reconnection heatingindicates the significant ion heating effect of magnetic reconnection, which leads to a new high-field reconnection heating experiment for fusion plasmas. � 2012 IOP Publishing Ltd.
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Keywords
Keywords: Current sheets; Downstream areas; Electron heating; Fusion plasmas; Heating experiment; High-field; Ion Heating; Magnetic field components; Magnetic field energy; Magnetic reconnections; Outflow kinetics; Shock formation; Tokamak plasmas; Two-dimensional
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Source
Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
Type
Journal article
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Restricted until
2037-12-31
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