Plasma Equilibrium in Self-Sustaining Toroidal Discharge

Abstract

It is shown that there exists a plasma equilibrium in a toroidal discharge without the toroidal field, where the plasma current is composed solely of diamagnetic current, driven by the plasma pressure gradient and so is of self-sustaining in principle. This type of configuration seems to suggest a tokamak like device and its corresponding operation for the FRC experiment or to offer a new method of initial current build-up in the tokamak.