Leiden University Student Repository

Scheinowitz, Naor Michael Arieh (2019)

On the Thermodynamics of Toroidal Helium Plasmas

Bachelor thesis | Natuurkunde (BSc)

Visual and spectroscopic observations were done on laser induced toroidal helium plasmas to determine its geometric properties as well as get an estimate of the temperature. These measurements were combined in an effort to gain insight into its underlying thermodynamic processes. At 10μs after creation, the torus was found to have a temperature in the order of 2500K, decreasing to 1000K at 50μs. During this period the volume of the torus increased by a factor in the order of 2.5. It was investigated whether this drop in temperature and increase in volume would follow a model of adiabatic expansion. A least squares fit gave a value of the adiabatic constant of γ = 1.21. More observations must be done to increase the accuracy of these values in order to make substantive conclusions.

Helium Plasma

Toroidal Plasma

Thermodynamics

Boltzmann Analysis

Author

Scheinowitz, Naor Michael Arieh

Note

Evaluation: 8

Faculty

Faculty of Science

Specialisation

Physics and Astronomy

Supervisors

Bouwmeester, Dirk

ECTS Credits

3

Language

en