EXPERIMENTAL-STUDY OF LOW-FREQUENCY DRIFT INSTABILITY

Experimental studies of nondissipative low frequency drift instability are reported; the plasma of a long mirror trap with edge casp anchors was investigated. The instability growth was found to take place only in a limited number of operation modes even in the case of all the gr owth requirements being satisfied. Furthermore,the instability develop ment is rather moderate, and the associated anomalous losses appear to be small compared to the classical Coulomb losses. Possible factors a ccounting for the ''soft'' instability evolution are discussed.