Magnetic Mirror Trap

Confinement of charged particles with a magnetic mirror trap

The " magnetic moment " in the field of plasma physics is not due to the spin of the particle, but due to the cyclotron motion of the particle, which is an adiabatic invariant.
Thus, a part of the particles injected from the weak field side is reflected at the strong field side. With the use of the magnetic field combination (strong -weak-strong), certain amount of charged particles can be confined in the weak field region.
In general, the confinement time of a magnetic mirror is not long due to the adiabatic invariance. The unique feature of the magnetic mirror confinement is that it can confine both positive and negative charged particles, which is applied for Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) ion sources, etc.
Here, non-neutral electron plasmas are trapped in a magnetic mirror trap to investigate the confinement properties and to see if an electron-positron plasma can be confined for the future experiments.

trap field and tc(R)

Low energy electron-positron plasmas

Experiments for the simultaneous confinement of low energy electrons and positrons were conducted in collaboration with RIKEN (2014-2017).

pictures pictures

References
  • H.Higaki, et. at., New.J.Phys.19 (2017) 023016
  • H.Higaki, et. at., Appl.Phys.Express 5 (2012) 106001
  • H.Higaki, et. at., Plasma and Fusion Res 5 (2010) 029
  • H.Higaki, et. at., Phys.Rev.E 81 (2010) 016401
  • H.Higaki, et. at., Phys.Rev.E 75 (2007) 066401
    • Back to the top