A 1905 study of pinches, where electric lightning was used to create a Z-pinch inside a metal tube.[1]
A current-driven toroidal Z-pinch in a krypton plasma
A pinch (or: Bennett pinch[2] (after Willard Harrison Bennett), electromagnetic pinch,[3]magnetic pinch,[4]pinch effect,[5] or plasma pinch.[6]) is the compression of an electrically conducting filament by magnetic forces, or a device that does such. The conductor is usually a plasma, but could also be a solid or liquid metal. Pinches were the first type of device used for experiments in controlled nuclear fusion power.[7]
This is a basic explanation of how a pinch works. (1) Pinches apply a high voltage and current across a tube. This tube is filled with a gas, typically a fusion fuel such as deuterium. If the product of the voltage & the charge is higher than the ionization energy of the gas the gas ionizes. (2) Current jumps across this gap. (3) The current makes a magnetic field which is perpendicular to the current. This magnetic field pulls the material together. (4) These atoms can get close enough to fuse.
Types
An example of a man-made pinch. Here Z-pinches constrain a plasma inside filaments of electrical discharge from a Tesla coil
The MagLIF concept, a combination of a Z-pinch and a laser beam
Pinches exist in nature and in laboratories. Pinches differ in their geometry and operating forces.[12] These include:
Uncontrolled – Any time an electric current moves in large amounts (e.g., lightning, arcs, sparks, discharges) a magnetic force can pull together plasma. This can be insufficient for fusion.
Sheet pinch – An astrophysical effect, this arises from vast sheets of charged particles.[13]
Theta pinch – The magnetic field runs down the axis of a cylinder, while the electric field is in the azimuthal direction (also called a thetatron[14])
Screw pinch – A combination of a Z-pinch and theta pinch[15] (also called a stabilized Z-pinch, or θ-Z pinch)[16][17]
Reversed field pinch or toroidal pinch – This is a Z-pinch arranged in the shape of a torus. The plasma has an internal magnetic field. As distance increases from the center of this ring, the magnetic field reverses direction.
Inverse pinch – An early fusion concept, this device consisted of a rod surrounded by plasma. Current traveled through the plasma and returned along the center rod.[18] This geometry was slightly different than a z-pinch in that the conductor was in the center, not the sides.
Cylindrical pinch
Orthogonal pinch effect
Ware pinch – A pinch that occurs inside a Tokamak plasma, when particles inside the banana orbit condense together.[19][20]
Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion (MagLIF) – A Z-pinch of preheated, premagnetized fuel inside a metal liner, which could lead to ignition and practical fusion energy with a larger pulsed-power driver.[21]
Pinches are used to generate X-rays and the intense magnetic fields generated are used in electromagnetic forming of metals. They also have applications in particle beams[27] including particle beam weapons,[28] astrophysics studies[29] and it has been proposed to use them in space propulsion.[30] A number of large pinch machines have been built to study fusion power; here are several:
MAGPIE A Z-pinch at Imperial College. This dumps a large amount of current across a wire. Under these conditions, the wire becomes plasma and compresses to produce fusion.[31]
Pinched aluminium can, produced via a pulsed magnetic field created by rapidly discharging 2 kilojoules from a high voltage capacitor bank into a 3-turn coil of heavy gauge wire.
An electromagnetic aluminium can crusher consists of four main components: a high-voltageDC power supply, which provides a source of electrical energy, a large energy dischargecapacitor to accumulate the electrical energy, a high voltage switch or spark gap, and a robust coil (capable of surviving high magnetic pressure) through which the stored electrical energy can be quickly discharged in order to generate a correspondingly strong pinching magnetic field (see diagram below).
In practice, such a device is somewhat more sophisticated than the schematic diagram suggests, including electrical components that control the current in order to maximize the resulting pinch, and to ensure that the device works safely. For more details, see the notes.[33]
The first creation of a Z-pinch in the laboratory may have occurred in 1790 in Holland when Martinus van Marum created an explosion by discharging 100 Leyden jars into a wire.[35] The phenomenon was not understood until 1905, when Pollock and Barraclough[1] investigated a compressed and distorted length of copper tube from a lightning rod after it had been struck by lightning. Their analysis showed that the forces due to the interaction of the large current flow with its own magnetic field could have caused the compression and distortion.[36] A similar, and apparently independent, theoretical analysis of the pinch effect in liquid metals was published by Northrup in 1907.[37] The next major development was the publication in 1934 of an analysis of the radial pressure balance in a static Z-pinch by Bennett[38] (see the following section for details).
Thereafter, the experimental and theoretical progress on pinches was driven by fusion power research. In their article on the "Wire-array Z-pinch: a powerful x-ray source for ICF", M G Haines et al., wrote on the "Early history of Z-pinches".[39]
In 1946 Thompson and Blackman submitted a patent for a fusion reactor based on a toroidal Z-pinch[40] with an additional vertical magnetic field. But in 1954 Kruskal and Schwarzschild[41] published their theory of MHD instabilities in a Z-pinch. In 1956, Kurchatov gave his famous Harwell lecture showing nonthermal neutrons and the presence of m = 0 and m = 1 instabilities in a deuterium pinch.[42] In 1957 Pease[43] and Braginskii[44][45] independently predicted radiative collapse in a Z-pinch under pressure balance when in hydrogen the current exceeds 1.4 MA. (The viscous rather than resistive dissipation of magnetic energy discussed above and in[46] would however prevent radiative collapse).
In 1958, the world's first controlled thermonuclear fusion experiment was accomplished using a theta-pinch machine named Scylla I at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. A cylinder full of deuterium was converted into a plasma and compressed to 15 million degrees Celsius under a theta-pinch effect.[7] Lastly, at Imperial College in 1960, led by R Latham, the Plateau–Rayleigh instability was shown, and its growth rate measured in a dynamic Z-pinch.[47]
Equilibrium analysis
One dimension
In plasma physics three pinch geometries are commonly studied: the θ-pinch, the Z-pinch, and the screw pinch. These are cylindrically shaped. The cylinder is symmetric in the axial (z) direction and the azimuthal (θ) directions. The one-dimensional pinches are named for the direction the current travels.
The θ-pinch
A sketch of the θ-pinch equilibrium. The z-directed magnetic field corresponds to a θ-directed plasma current.
The θ-pinch has a magnetic field directed in the z direction and a large diamagnetic current directed in the θ direction. Using Ampère's circuital law (discarding the displacement term)
Since particles in a plasma basically follow magnetic field lines, Z-pinches lead them around in circles. Therefore, they tend to have excellent confinement properties.
The screw pinch
The screw pinch is an effort to combine the stability aspects of the θ-pinch and the confinement aspects of the Z-pinch. Referring once again to Ampère's law,
The screw pinch might be produced in laser plasma by colliding optical vortices of ultrashort duration.[48] For this purpose optical vortices should be phase-conjugated.[49]
The magnetic field distribution is given here again via Ampère's law:
A toroidal coordinate system in common use in plasma physics.
The red arrow denotes the poloidal direction (θ)
The blue arrow denotes the toroidal direction (φ)
A common problem with one-dimensional pinches is the end losses. Most of the motion of particles is along the magnetic field. With the θ-pinch and the screw-pinch, this leads particles out of the end of the machine very quickly, leading to a loss of mass and energy. Along with this problem, the Z-pinch has major stability problems. Though particles can be reflected to some extent with magnetic mirrors, even these allow many particles to pass. A common method of beating these end losses, is to bend the cylinder around into a torus. Unfortunately this breaks θ symmetry, as paths on the inner portion (inboard side) of the torus are shorter than similar paths on the outer portion (outboard side). Thus, a new theory is needed. This gives rise to the famous Grad–Shafranov equation. Numerical solutions to the Grad–Shafranov equation have also yielded some equilibria, most notably that of the reversed field pinch.
Three dimensions
(As of 2015), there is no coherent analytical theory for three-dimensional equilibria. The general approach to finding such equilibria is to solve the vacuum ideal MHD equations. Numerical solutions have yielded designs for stellarators. Some machines take advantage of simplification techniques such as helical symmetry (for example University of Wisconsin's Helically Symmetric eXperiment). However, for an arbitrary three-dimensional configuration, an equilibrium relation, similar to that of the 1-D configurations exists:[50]
A stream of water pinching into droplets has been suggested as an analogy to the electromagnetic pinch.[51] Gravity accelerates free-falling water which causes the water column to constrict. Surface tension breaks the narrowing water column into droplets (not shown, see Plateau–Rayleigh instability). This is analogous to the magnetic field suggested as the cause of pinching in bead lightning.[52] The morphology (shape) is similar to the so-called sausage instability in plasma.
The Bennett relation
Consider a cylindrical column of fully ionized quasineutral plasma, with an axial electric field, producing an axial current density, j, and associated azimuthal magnetic field, B. As the current flows through its own magnetic field, a pinch is generated with an inward radial force density of j x B. In a steady state with forces balancing:
[math]\displaystyle{ \nabla p = \nabla(p_e+p_i) = \mathbf{j}\times\mathbf{B} }[/math]
where ∇p is the magnetic pressure gradient, and pe and pi are the electron and ion pressures, respectively. Then using Maxwell's equation[math]\displaystyle{ \nabla\times\mathbf{B} = \mu_0\mathbf{j} }[/math] and the ideal gas law[math]\displaystyle{ p=NkT }[/math], we derive:
[math]\displaystyle{ 2 N k(T_e + T_i) = \frac{{\mu_0}} {4 \pi} I^2 }[/math] (the Bennett relation)
where N is the number of electrons per unit length along the axis, Te and Ti are the electron and ion temperatures, I is the total beam current, and k is the Boltzmann constant.
The generalized Bennett relation
The generalized Bennett relation considers a current-carrying magnetic-field-aligned cylindrical plasma pinch undergoing rotation at angular frequency ω
The generalized Bennett relation considers a current-carrying magnetic-field-aligned cylindrical plasma pinch undergoing rotation at angular frequency ω. Along the axis of the plasma cylinder flows a current density jz, resulting in an azimuthal magnetic field Βφ. Originally derived by Witalis,[53] the generalized Bennett relation results in:[54]
where a current-carrying, magnetic-field-aligned cylindrical plasma has a radius a,
J0 is the total moment of inertia with respect to the z axis,
W⊥kin is the kinetic energy per unit length due to beam motion transverse to the beam axis
WBz is the self-consistent Bz energy per unit length
WEz is the self-consistent Ez energy per unit length
Wk is thermokinetic energy per unit length
I(a) is the axial current inside the radius a (r in diagram)
N(a) is the total number of particles per unit length
Er is the radial electric field
Eφ is the rotational electric field
The positive terms in the equation are expansional forces while the negative terms represent beam compressional forces.
The Carlqvist relation
The Carlqvist relation, published by Per Carlqvist in 1988,[12] is a specialization of the generalized Bennett relation (above), for the case that the kinetic pressure is much smaller at the border of the pinch than in the inner parts. It takes the form
The Bennett pinch showing the total current (I) versus the number of particles per unit length (N). The chart illustrates four physically distinct regions. The plasma temperature is 20 K, the mean particle mass 3×10−27 kg, and ΔWBz is the excess magnetic energy per unit length due to the axial magnetic field Bz. The plasma is assumed to be non-rotational, and the kinetic pressure at the edges is much smaller than inside.
The Carlqvist relation can be illustrated (see right), showing the total current (I) versus the number of particles per unit length (N) in a Bennett pinch. The chart illustrates four physically distinct regions. The plasma temperature is quite cold (Ti = Te = Tn = 20 K), containing mainly hydrogen with a mean particle mass 3×10−27 kg. The thermokinetic energy Wk >> πa2pk(a). The curves, ΔWBz show different amounts of excess magnetic energy per unit length due to the axial magnetic field Bz. The plasma is assumed to be non-rotational, and the kinetic pressure at the edges is much smaller than inside.
Chart regions: (a) In the top-left region, the pinching force dominates. (b) Towards the bottom, outward kinetic pressures balance inwards magnetic pressure, and the total pressure is constant. (c) To the right of the vertical line ΔWBz = 0, the magnetic pressures balances the gravitational pressure, and the pinching force is negligible. (d) To the left of the sloping curve ΔWBz = 0, the gravitational force is negligible. Note that the chart shows a special case of the Carlqvist relation, and if it is replaced by the more general Bennett relation, then the designated regions of the chart are not valid.
Carlqvist further notes that by using the relations above, and a derivative, it is possible to describe the Bennett pinch, the Jeans criterion (for gravitational instability,[55] in one and two dimensions), force-free magnetic fields, gravitationally balanced magnetic pressures, and continuous transitions between these states.
References in culture
A fictionalized pinch-generating device was used in Ocean's Eleven, where it was used to disrupt Las Vegas's power grid just long enough for the characters to begin their heist.[56]
↑Schmidt, Helmut (1966). "Formation of a Magnetic Pinch in InSb and the Possibility of Population Inversion in the Pinch". Physical Review149 (2): 564–573. doi:10.1103/physrev.149.564. Bibcode: 1966PhRv..149..564S.
↑Severnyi, A. B. (1959). "On the Appearance of Cosmics Rays in the Pinch Effect in Solar Flares". Soviet Astronomy3: 887. Bibcode: 1959SvA.....3..887S.
↑Zueva, N. M.; Solov'ev, L. S.; Morozov, A. I. (1976). "Nonlinear instability of plasma pinches". Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters23: 256. Bibcode: 1976JETPL..23..256Z.
↑ 7.07.1Phillips, James (Winter 1983). "Magnetic Fusion". Los Alamos Science: 64–67.
↑Rai, J.; Singh, A. K.; Saha, S. K (1973). "Magnetic field within the return stroke channel of lightning". Indian Journal of Radio and Space Physics2: 240–242. Bibcode: 1973IJRSP...2..240R.
↑Galperin, Iu. I.; Zelenyi, L. M.; Kuznetsova, M. M. (1986). "Pinching of field-aligned currents as a possible mechanism for the formation of raylike auroral forms". Kosmicheskie Issledovaniia24: 865–874. Bibcode: 1986KosIs..24..865G.
↑Airapetyan, V. S.; Vikhrev, V. V.; Ivanov, V. V.; Rozanova, G. A. (1990). "Pinch Mechanism of Energy Release of Stellar Flares". Astrophysics32 (3): 230–235. doi:10.1007/bf01005504. Bibcode: 1990Ap.....32..230A.
↑Helander, P.; Akers, R. J.; Valovič, M. (3 November 2005). "The effect of non-inductive current drive on tokamak transport". Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion47 (12B): B151–B163. doi:10.1088/0741-3335/47/12b/s12. Bibcode: 2005PPCF...47B.151H.
↑Hardee, P. E. (1982). "Helical and pinching instability of supersonic expanding jets in extragalactic radio sources". Astrophysical Journal257: 509–526. doi:10.1086/160008. Bibcode: 1982ApJ...257..509H.
↑"Z-Pinch Pulsed Plasma Propulsion Technology Development" Final Report Advanced Concepts Office (ED04) Marshall Space Flight Center October 8, 2010, Tara Polsgrove, Et Al.
↑Thompson, G. P.; Blackman; Haines, M. G. (1996). "Historical Perspective: Fifty years of controlled fusion research". Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion38 (5): 643–656. doi:10.1088/0741-3335/38/5/001. Bibcode: 1996PPCF...38..643H.
↑Haines M G et al. 2005 Phys. Rev. Lett.. submitted; see also EPS Conf. on Plasma Physics 2004 (London, UK) paper 73
↑Curzon, F. L. (1960). "Experiments on the Growth Rate of Surface Instabilities in a Linear Pinched Discharge". Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A257 (1290): 386–401. doi:10.1098/rspa.1960.0158. Bibcode: 1960RSPSA.257..386C.
↑Ideal Magnetohydrodynamics: Modern perspectives in energy. Jeffrey P. Freidberg. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Plenum Press - New York and London - 1987. (Pg. 86, 95)
↑Trubnikov, Boris A (1992). "A new hypothesis of cosmic ray generation in plasma pinches". IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science20 (6): 898–904. doi:10.1109/27.199547. Bibcode: 1992ITPS...20..898T.
↑"The PLASMAK Configuration and Ball Lightning" (PDF ) presented at the International Symposium on Ball Lightning; July 1988