Report to DOE on the evaluation of initial trapping studies

This report summarizes work up to Dec. 1, 1978 on the single mirror plug of Phaedrus. The design, construction and initial experiments proceeded without major problems. The results on RF trapping and heating steadily improved during the months of October and November with our best results being obtained during the last two weeks of November. These positive results are encouraging for RF heating in mirrors. The experiments to date have concentrated on heating stream gun plasmas. This plasma source has been well suited for our initial studies as it produces a hot, dense plasma over a long duration (approx. 1 msec). This has made diagnostics particularly straight forward. Because of the time scale we have carried out most of our work with the 200 kW source which is capable of running for long pulses (30 msec)