Cold Octopole and Hot Tokomak Show Long Confinement Times

Two results reported at the Dubna International Symposium on Closed Confinement Systems have excited fusion physicists. The high temperature and long confinement time that Lev Artsimovich observed with Tokomak (PHYSICS TODAY, June, page 54) have been confirmed by a visiting British team, and with the Gulf General Atomic multipole Tihiro Ohkawa served very long confinement times. In further experiments (which Ohkawa reported at the November meeting of the APS plasma‐physics division in Los Angeles) Ohkawa observed classical diffusion in a dilute cold plasma. His collaborators were Masaji Yoshikawa, Robert Kribel and A. A. Schupp.