Plasma enclosed in a magnetic field produced by flexible surface magnets

A homogeneous steady state plasma with a usable volume of approximately 200 l and with an electron temperature of 1-2 eV and a plasma density of approximately 10(9)-10(10) cm(-3) is produced in a discharge chamber the outside of whose walls is covered with flexible magnetic strips. This magnet arrangement can be built at a fraction of the cost of a conventional system using rigid surface magnets. The magnetic multipole field leads to an increase of the plasma density by one to two orders of magnitude and it is also found to cause trapping of high energy electrons originating from the discharge region.