Trisops

Trisops was an experimental machine for the study of magnetic confinement of plasmas with the ultimate goal of producing fusion power.

Force free plasma vortices have uniform magnetic helicity and therefore are stable against many instabilities.

For a laboratory plasma α is a constant and β is a scalar function of spatial coordinates.

This is similar to the field configuration of a tokamak, except that the field-producing coils are simpler and do not penetrate the plasma torus.

He later moved to the University of Miami where he set up the Trisops machine, supported by the National Science Foundation and Florida Power and Light.

The project continued until 1978, when the National Science Foundation (NSF) discontinued the grant and the United States Department of Energy (DOE) did not pick up the support.

The fourth and final version of the Trisops machine consisted of DC mirror coils producing a 0.5 T guide field, two conical θ-pinch guns which produced two counter-rotating plasma vortices inside a pyrex vacuum chamber.

Defunding prevented further measurements to resolve the discrepancy between the above figures, and the plasma electron-ion temperature equilibration time of 1 μs.