Fast Electrons Behavior in Presence of External Radial Electric Field in IR-T1 Tokamak

The fact that the mean free path of an electron in plasma is a strongly increasing function of its velocity gives rise to the phenomenon of fast (high energy) electron production. In an electric field, electrons which exceed a critical velocity, for which the collisional drag balances the acceleration by the field, are accelerated freely and can reach very high energies. In low density tokamak discharges a considerable amount of these high energy electrons with energies up to tens of keV to MeV can thus be created. As these energetic electrons are effectively collision-less, they follow the magnetic field lines and can therefore been used to probe the magnetic turbulence in the core of the plasma. In this research, external electric field effects on the discharges which lead to this phenomenon were investigated. Tokamak limiter biasing is one of the methods for controlling the radial electric field and can induce a transition to an improved confinement state.