Magnetic alignment of the Tara tandem mirror.

Techniques developed for the alignment of high-energy accelerators have been applied to the alignment of the Tara tandem mirror magnetic confinement device. Tools used were: a transit/laser surveyor’s system for establishing an invariant reference; optical scattering from ferromagnetic crystallites for establishing magnetic centers in the quadrupole anchor/transition modules; an electron-optical circle-generating wand for alignment of the solenoidal plug and central cell modules; and four differently configured electron emissive probes, including a 40-beam flux mapping e gun, for testing the alignment of the coils under vacuum. Procedures are outlined, and results are given which show that the magnetic axes of the individual coils in the Tara set have been made colinear with each other and with the reference to within ±1.0 mm over the length of the machine between the anchor midplanes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]