https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201713203020
Plasma heating and acceleration in current sheets formed in discharges in argon
Prokhorov General Physics Institute RAS, 119991 Moscow, Russia
* Corresponding author: kyrie@fpl.gpi.ru
Published online: 13 December 2016
According to present notion, flares on the sun and other stars, substorms in magnetospheres of Earth and other planets, and disruptive instabilities in tokamak plasma are connected to development of current sheets in magnetized plasma. Therefore, current sheet dynamics and magnetic reconnection processes were studied actively during the last several decades. This paper presents the results of experimental studies of plasma heating and acceleration in current sheets formed in discharges in argon. The temperature and energy of directed motion of argon ions of different degrees of ionization were measured by spectroscopic methods. It was found that Ar II, Ar III and Ar IV ions are localized in different regions of the sheet. It was shown that Ampere forces applied to the sheet can accelerate the argon ions to observed energies.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2017
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
