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Volume 53 Supplement 6

Special Issue: Magnetic Reconnection in Space and Laboratory Plasmas

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High-power heating of spherical tori by use of magnetic reconnection

Abstract

A novel high-power heating experiment of spherical tori (ST) has been developed in the TS-3 reconnection device using magnetic reconnection of merging STs. This method enables us to inject whole magnetic and thermal energies of a colliding ST into a target ST within short reconnection time. The maximum heating power of 15 MW was obtained in our low-field (0.03–0.08 T) and small-scale (R < 0.2 m) merging experiment. This heating energy is provided mostly by anomalous ion heating effect of magnetic reconnection. The ion heating energy and the merging speed increases with decreasing the q-value (B t component) of the ST. This heating effect causes the β-values of STs to increase by factor 2–3.

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Correspondence to Yoshinobu Ueda.

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Ueda, Y., Ono, Y. High-power heating of spherical tori by use of magnetic reconnection. Earth Planet Sp 53, 527–530 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03353265

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03353265

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