Confinement Properties of the Levitated Spherator

To eliminate the anomalous loss due to convective cells produced by the existence of the supports in the plasma volume, a levitated superconducting ring was installed in the Princeton spherator. The plasma decay time is increased from 10-15 msec in the supported version to a maximum of 150-220 msec for a helium discharge plasma. At nₑ=2×10¹¹ cm^-3 and Tₑ=1-2 eV, this decay time is {} to {} of the calculated density decay time due to the classical diffusion process.