Long-lived filaments in fusion plasmas: review of observations and status of hypothesis of microdust-assembled skeletons

Abstract

A brief review is given of the progress in studying the long-lived filaments (LLFs) in fusion plasmas (tokamaks, Z-pinch, plasma focus). The paper reports on (i) resolving the fine structure of LLFs, and (ii) verification of our hypothesis (1998) which suggested the LLFs to possess a microsolid skeleton. The recent proof-of-concept studies showed the presence of tubular and cartwheel-like structures in (i) various dust deposits in tokamak T-10, in the range 10 nm - 10 mcm, and (ii) visible light images of plasma, in the range 100 mcm - 10 cm, at initial stage of discharge (e.g., before appearance of discharge electric current) in tokamak, plasma focus and vacuum spark. The topological similarity of the above structures (especially, "cartwheels") and the observed trend of assembling bigger tubules from smaller ones (i.e. the self-similarity) allow to draw a bridge between the microdust skeletons in the dust deposits and the centimeter scale LLFs in fusion plasmas.

15 pages, 19 figures. Submitted to "Current Trends in Int. Fusion Research" (Proc. 4-th Symposium, Washington, D.C., USA, March 2001). Eds. C.D. Orth, E. Panarella, and R.F. Post. NRC Research Press, Nat. Res. Council of Canada, Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6 Canada, 2001

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