Magnetic confinement of a high-density cylindrical plasma

The stationary structure of a weakly collisional plasma column, confined by an axial magnetic field and a cylindrical vessel, is studied for the high-density case, when the diamagnetic azimuthal current is large enough to demagnetize partially the plasma. The plasma response is characterized mainly by two dimensionless parameters: the ratios of the electron gyroradius and the electron skin-depth to the plasma radius, and each of them measures the independent influence of the applied magnetic field and the plasma density on the plasma response. The strong magnetic confinement regime, characterized by very small wall losses, is limited to the small gyroradius and large skin-depth ranges. In the high-density case, when the electron skin-depth is smaller than the electron gyroradius, the skin-depth turns out to be the magnetic screening length, so that the bulk of the plasma behaves as unmagnetized. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3646923]