PLASMA-HEATING BY HIGH-ENERGY-CONTENT MICROSECOND ELECTRON-BEAM AT THE GOL-3-II FACILITY

A description of the GOL-3-II facility and the first experimental resu lts obtained on this new device are presented. This facility was const ructed as part of the second stage of the GOL-3 programme for studying the interaction of microsecond electron beams with a plasma and its f ast heating. The plasma column of the GOL-3-II facility is 12 m in len gth instead of 7 m for the first stage of GOL-3. The energy content of the capacitive storage for magnetic held supply has been increased fr om 10 MJ to 15 MJ. This allows us to have a magnetic field of up to 5 T in the homogeneous part of the solenoid and up to 10 T in its end mi rrors. The expected key feature of the upgrading is an essential incre ase in the energy content of the electron beam injected into the plasm a. The high-power electron beam generator U-2 is now used for the new beam-plasma interaction experiments with possible beam energy content of up to 0.3 MJ. It is shown experimentally that transportation of a 0 .2 MJ electron beam through the 12 m plasma column is possible under c onditions of almost full current neutralization. The collective beam-p lasma interaction results in a plasma heating of up to 1-2 keV electro n temperature at approximate to 10(15) cm(-3) density.