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The Tomamak Fusion Test reactor has performed initial high-power experiments with the plasma fueled with nominally equal densities of deuterium and tritium. Compared to pure deuterium plasmas, the energy stored in the electron and ions increased by ∼20%. These increases indicate improvements in confinement associated with the use of tritium and possibly heating of electrons by α particles created by the D-T fusion reactions. © 1994 The American Physical Society.

Peak fusion power production of 6.2±0.4 MW has been achieved in TFTR plasmas heated by deuterium and tritium neutral beams at a total power of 29.5 MW. These plasmas have an inferred central fusion alpha particle density of 1.2×1017 m-3 without the appearance of either disruptive magnetohydrodynamics events or detectable changes in Alfvén wave activity. The measured loss rate of energetic alpha particles agreed with the approximately 5% losses expected from alpha particles which are born on unconfined orbits. © 1994 The American Physical Society.

Tangentially coinjected deuterium beam ions were accelerated from 82 up to 150 keV during a major-radius compression experiment in the tokamak fusion test reactor. The ion energy spectra and the variation in fusion yield were in good agreement with Fokker-Planck code simulations. In addition, the plasma rotation velocity was observed to rise during compression. © 1985 The American Physical Society.

Neutral-beam heating of plasmas in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at low preinjection densities [ne(0)1019 m-3] were characterized by Te(0)=6.5 keV, Ti(0)=20 keV, ne(0)=7×1019 m-3, E=170 msec, theta=2, and a d(d,n)3He neutron emission rate of 1016 sec-1. The ion temperature and the deuterium-fusion neutron yields were significantly higher than for previous tokamak experiments. The low initial densities were achieved by operation of the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor with low plasma currents (1 MA) and by extensive limiter conditioning. © 1987 The American Physical Society.

Solids ablate under laser irradiation, but experiments have not previously characterized the initiation of this process at ultrarelativistic laser intensities. We present first measurements of bulk ion velocity distributions as ablation begins, captured as a function of depth via Doppler-shifted x-ray line emission from two viewing angles. Bayesian analysis indicates that bulk ions are either nearly stationary or flowing outward at the plasma sound speed. The measurements quantitatively constrain the laser-plasma ablation mechanism, suggesting that a steplike electrostatic potential structure drives solid disassembly.

Evolution of the hot spot plasma conditions was measured using high-resolution x-ray spectroscopy at the National Ignition Facility. The capsules were filled with DD gas with trace levels of Kr and had either a high-density-carbon (HDC) ablator or a tungsten (W)-doped HDC ablator. Time-resolved measurement of the Kr Heβ spectra, absolutely calibrated by a simultaneous time-integrated measurement, allows inference of the electron density and temperature through observing Stark broadening and the relative intensities of dielectronic satellites. By matching the calculated hot spot emission using a collisional-radiative code to experimental observations, the hot spot size and areal density are determined. These advanced spectroscopy techniques further reveal the effect of W dopant in the ablator on the hot spot parameters for their improved implosion performance.

Heβ spectral line shapes are important for diagnosing temperature and density in many dense plasmas. This work presents Heβ line shapes measured with high spectral resolution from solid-density plasmas with minimized gradients. The line shapes show hallmark features of Stark broadening, including quantifiable redshifts and double-peaked structure with a significant dip between the peaks; these features are compared to models through a Markov chain Monte Carlo framework. Line shape theory using the dipole approximation can fit the width and peak separation of measured line shapes, but it cannot resolve an ambiguity between electron density n_{e} and ion temperature T_{i}, since both parameters influence the strength of quasistatic ion microfields. Here a line shape model employing a full Coulomb interaction for the electron broadening computes self-consistent line widths and redshifts through the monopole term; redshifts have different dependence on plasma parameters and thus resolve the n_{e}-T_{i} ambiguity. The measured line shapes indicate densities that are 80-100% of solid, identifying a regime of highly ionized but well-tamped plasma. This analysis also provides the first strong evidence that dense ions and electrons are not in thermal equilibrium, despite equilibration times much shorter than the duration of x-ray emission; cooler ions may arise from nonclassical thermalization rates or anomalous energy transport. The experimental platform and diagnostic technique constitute a promising new approach for studying ion-electron equilibration in dense plasmas.

Dielectronic satellite spectra of heliumlike argon, recorded with a high-resolution x-ray crystal spectrometer at the National Spherical Torus Experiment, were found to be inconsistent with existing predictions resulting in unacceptable values for the power balance and suggesting the unlikely existence of non-Maxwellian electron energy distributions. These problems were resolved with calculations from a new atomic code. It is now possible to perform reliable electron-temperature measurements and to eliminate the uncertainties associated with determinations of non-Maxwellian distributions.