Experimental Status of the HANBIT Facility

Abstract

HANBIT is a magnetic mirror confinement device. Recent physics experiments have been mainly focused on identifying discharge characteristics and on getting stable plasma production and operation modes, by using a 500 kW slot antenna system at a fixed RF frequency of 3.5 MHz and varying discharge conditions such as fueling rate, RF power, and B-field intensity in central cell. Two distinct operation modes are found to be very sensitive to the RF power as well as the ratio of the RF frequency to the ion cyclotron frequency. A MHD interchange mode of m = -1 is clearly observed and the stabilizing mechanism can be explained by the sideband coupling theory.