Magnetized potential structures in a laboratory plasma

Summary form only given. The double layers that are thought to accelerate the auroral electron streams exist in the earth's plasma-filled magnetized flux tubes. Not much is known about these structures, e.g., whether they are tilted with respect to the magnetic field, how many spatial dimensions are relevant, how long is their lifetime, their relation to wave turbulence, etc. In order to study these questions, a magnetized plasma device has been constructed with two very efficient RF loop antenna plasma sources that generate a radially and axially uniform plasma and allow for controllable boundary conditions. The scaling to spacelike parameters is good for a laboratory device with a collisionless plasma with a radius of approximately 20 cm and a length of 70 cm. The plasma density can be varied from n_e approximately 10⁶-10¹¹ cm^-3, electron temperature T_e approximately 2-5 eV (T_e ≫ T_i), with a background magnetic field B₀ < 200 G and a fill pressure of 7-10 × 10^-5 torr. The plasma radius is many gyro radii across. The Debye lengths are much smaller than the plasma dimensions.