Thomson scattering on the large plasma device.

We have developed a non-collective Thomson scattering diagnostic for measurements of electron density and temperature on the Large Plasma Device. A triple grating spectrometer with a tunable notch filter is used to discriminate the faint scattering signal from the stray light. In this paper, we describe the diagnostic and its calibration via Raman scattering and present the first measurements performed with the fully commissioned system. Depending on the discharge conditions, the measured densities and temperatures range from 4.0 × 1012 to 2.8 × 1013 cm-3 and from 1.2 to 6.8 eV, respectively. The variation of the measurement error with plasma parameters and discharges averaged is also discussed.

The upgraded Large Plasma Device, a machine for studying frontier basic plasma physics.

In 1991 a manuscript describing an instrument for studying magnetized plasmas was published in this journal. The Large Plasma Device (LAPD) was upgraded in 2001 and has become a national user facility for the study of basic plasma physics. The upgrade as well as diagnostics introduced since then has significantly changed the capabilities of the device. All references to the machine still quote the original RSI paper, which at this time is not appropriate. In this work, the properties of the updated LAPD are presented. The strategy of the machine construction, the available diagnostics, the parameters available for experiments, as well as illustrations of several experiments are presented here.

A new large area lanthanum hexaboride plasma source.

A new 18x18 cm(2) active area lanthanum hexaboride (LaB(6)) plasma source for use in a dc discharge has been developed at UCLA. The cathode consists of four tiled LaB(6) pieces indirectly heated to electron emission (1750 degrees C) by a graphite heater. A molybdenum mesh anode 33 cm in front of the LaB(6) accelerates the electrons, ionizing a fill gas to create a 20x20 cm(2) nearly square plasma. The source is run in pulsed operation with the anode biased up to +400 V dc with respect to the cathode for up to 100 ms at a 1 Hz repetition rate. Both the cathode and anode "float" electrically with respect to the chamber walls. The source is placed in a toroidal chamber 2 m wide and 3 m tall with a major radius of 5 m. Toroidal and vertical magnetic fields confine the current-free plasma which follows the field in a helix. The plasma starts on the bottom of the machine and spirals around it up to four times (120 m) and can be configured to terminate either on the top wall or on the neutral gas itself. The source typically operates with a discharge current up to 250 A in helium making plasmas with T(e)<30 eV, T(i)<16 eV, and n(e)<3x10(13) cm(-3) in a background field of 100 G