ISSN:
1089-7623
Source:
AIP Digital Archive
Topics:
Physics
,
Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
Notes:
The results of processing the plasma images with the help of the method of multilevel dynamical contrasting (MDC)1 are presented. The images are taken in visible light, with space resolution ∼100 μm and time resolution ∼10 μs, in various tokamaks (TM-2, T-4, T-6, and T-10). The presence of rigid-body filamentary structures is found. They are similar to those structures formerly found in a Z-pinch, whose long life was proven2 in tracing their dynamics. The reliability of results is supported by the rich statistics and considerable similarity of the structures in various facilities and regimes, as well as by the insensitivity of observed structuring to a specific way of imaging (strick camera, fast photography, etc.). Sometimes the structuring may be seen without MDC processing (in such cases, the MDC allows fine resolution of structuring). The most typical structure is a straight cylindrical block varying in length from few centimeters up to a diameter of plasma column. The diameter of such a block varies, respectively, from a few millimeters to several centimeters. The most attention is paid to radially directed filaments which, together with toroidal and poloidal filaments, form a network. Detailed analysis of individual cylindrical blocks of several centimeters in diameter revealed them to be a coaxial tubular structure with an inner rod (which may be of tubular form as well) of a few millimeters diameter. The similarity of the above structures to coaxial cables may appear to not be occasional: according to the hypothesis3 the elementary coaxial block of diameter not exceeding few millimeters, is a "wild cable" in which the propagating high-frequency (HF) electromagnetic wave produces a vacuum channel around the hypothetical microsolid skeleton2 and thus protects the skeleton from the ambient high-temperature plasma. An analysis of measurements of HF electric fields, both inside and outside the plasma column in tokamak T-10, reveals their reasonable agreement with predictions based on the hypothesis.3 © 2001 American Institute of Physics.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.1323474
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