Formation of Plasmas with Tangled Magnetic Fields as Target Plasma for Magneto-Inertial Fusion

Plasmas with highly tangled magnetic fields have drawn interest in multiple physics disciplines, such as fundamental plasma physics and astrophysics. Specifically for magneto-inertial fusion (MIF), plasmas containing a tangled magnetic field have been proposed as a novel fusion fuel target plasma, which is quasi-adiabatically compressed and heated by heavy imploding shell or "linear" to achieve thermonuclear conditions. In this work, we present experiments attempting to form plasmas with tangled magnetic fields by colliding compact toroid (CT) plasmas with a coarse grid structure at the Big Red Ball (BRB) Facility at Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory (WIPPL). The topology of the magnetic field perturbed by the grid is measured using a 3-axis Bdot probe array and plasma electron temperature is inferred using a multi-tip Langmuir probe.