Search

In ST Tokamak discharges with hydrogen or helium as the working gas the measured plasma resistance is usually found to be slight but consistently larger (1.1-1.5 times) than the resistance calculated from measured electron temperature and ionic charge radial profiles. The discrepancy has been ascribed tentatively to undetected high-Z material (Mo or W) from the aperture limiter. Recent experiments with neon, with effective ionic charge Z=9-10 in the discharge, do show good agreement between measured and calculated resistance. In other respects the behaviour of the neon discharge differs only slightly and in the expected direction from hydrogen or helium discharges: larger power input, higher electron temperature, and higher radiation losses. Also, measurement of the intensities of the recently discovered resonance lines of Mo XIII and Mo XIV do indicate a molybdenum concentration in the discharges of the ST Tokamak that is adequate to account for the above mentioned discrepancies in the resistance of H and He plasmas.

A detailed description of the time behaviour of a hydrogen discharge in the ST-Tokamak is based on measured radial electron temperature and density profiles at 12 different times, together with measurements of the Ohmic-heating current and voltage, the temporal, spatial, and spectral distributions of hydrogen light, the ion temperatures, and impurity concentrations. Early in the discharge the electron temperature profiles show evidence of a skin effect that develops on a time-scale of several milliseconds into a peaked profile of about 2.2 keV maximum. Thereafter the peak temperature stops growing and develops into a flat plateau, the width of which appears to be determined by the Kruskal-Shafranov limit. The average particle confinement time scales with , and reaches a maximum of 13-14 ms. The power balance is dominated by electron loss and re-cycling, rather than ion loss or radiation. The recycling process at the aperture limiter appears to involve sufficiently energetic neutral atoms to provide a fairly flat radial source function for particles, and hence to influence directly the development of the radial distribution of power input and energy balance.

Transition rate equations for atomic hydrogen are solved to obtain coefficients for population of excited levels and for ionization and recombination. The results are based upon more accurate transition rates, cover a wider range of plasma parameters, and are obtained by a more general solution of the rate equations than previously available compilations. Diagnostic applications for laboratory plasmas are discussed.

Release of human growth hormone (HGH) has been shown to occur during normal undisturbed sleep.1,2,3 We have also demonstrated in our laboratory that this release is related to the physiologic state of sleep itself and is not dependent of an inherent circadian rhythm.4 Finally, we have demonstrated that release of HGH is correlated with that portion of sleep cycles showing slow, synchronized electroencephalographic activity.4 We now report results of an attempt to deprive subjects of EEG stages 3 and 4,5 referred to as slow wave sleep (SWS), to test the effect of this deprivation on release of HGH in sleep. The data suggest that deprivation of SWS results in diminished and delayed secretion of HGH in sleep.