For Heating Plasma in Fusion Devices, Researchers Unravel How Electrons Respond to Neutral Beam Injection
Department of Energy, Office of SciencePlasmas for fusion research can be heated using neutral beam injection (NBI). With NBI, fast neutral particles from a beam source are injected into the plasma then ionized so that the particles can transfer energy to existing plasma electrons and ions. This transfers the ions’ energy and heats the plasma. Researchers recently studied the variation in electron temperature during NBI and used the data to experimentally determine the neutral beam deposition profile.