Expansion of dense particle clouds in magnetically confined plasmas

A single-cell Lagrangian model has been developed for calculating the ionization and expansion dynamics of high-density clouds in magnetic fields or in magnetically confined plasmas. The model was tested by means of data from magnetospheric barium cloud experiments and approximately reproduced such global characteristics as expansion rate, stopping radius, stopping time, and magnetic cavity lifetime. Detailed calculations were performed for hydrogen clouds associated with the injection of frozen hydrogen pellets into tokamak plasmas. The dynamic characteristics of the cloud expansion, such as ionization radius, stopping time, lifetime, oscillation frequencies, and amplitudes, etc., are computed as functions of the magnetic field strength, the background plasma temperature, and the cloud mass. The results are analyzed and compared with experimental observations.