• DOI:10.1063/1.5019727
• Corpus ID: 4903237

Experimental investigation of coaxial-gun-formed plasmas injected into a background transverse magnetic field or plasma

@article{Zhang2017ExperimentalIO,
  title={Experimental investigation of coaxial-gun-formed plasmas injected into a background transverse magnetic field or plasma},
  author={Yue Zhang and Dustin M Fisher and Mark Gilmore and Scott C. Hsu and Alan G. Lynn},
  journal={Physics of Plasmas},
  year={2017},
  volume={25},
  pages={055709}
}

• Yue Zhang, D. Fisher, +2 authors A. Lynn
• Published 15 December 2017
• Physics
• Physics of Plasmas

Injection of coaxial-gun-formed magnetized plasmas into a background transverse vacuum magnetic field or into a background magnetized plasma has been studied in the helicon-cathode (HelCat) linear plasma device at the University of New Mexico [M. Gilmore et al., J. Plasma Phys. 81, 345810104 (2015)]. A magnetized plasma jet launched into a background transverse magnetic field shows emergent kink stabilization of the jet due to the formation of a sheared flow in the jet above the kink stabilization threshold 0.1kVA [Y. Zhang et al., Phys. Plasmas 24, 110702 (2017)]. Injection of a spheromak-like plasma into a transverse background magnetic field led to the observation of finger-like structures on the side with a stronger magnetic field null between the spheromak and the background field. The finger-like structures are consistent with magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor instability. Jets or spheromaks launched into a background, low-β magnetized plasma show similar behavior as above, respectively, in both cases.