Physical Review Letters -- August 7, 1995
Volume 75, Issue 6, pp. 1086-1089

Effect of collisionality and diamagnetism on the plasma dynamo

H. Ji, Y. Yagi, K. Hattori, A. F. Almagri, S. C. Prager, Y. Hirano, J. S. Sarff, T. Shimada, Y. Maejima, and K. Hayase

Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University, P.O. Box 451, Princeton, New Jersey 08543

Plasma Section, Electrotechnical Laboratory, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305, Japan

Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706

Fluctuation-induced dynamo electric fields are measured over a wide range of electron collisionality in the edge of TPE-1RM20 reversed-field pinch (RFP). In the collisionless region the magnetohydrodynamic dynamo alone can sustain the parallel current, while in the collisional region a new dynamo mechanism resulting from the fluctuations in the electron diamagnetic drift becomes dominant. A comprehensive picture of the RFP dynamo emerges by combining with earlier results from MST and REPUTE RFPs.

Full paper: pdf file (206 Kb).