**6. References**


© 2012 Shoucri, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

© 2012 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

is the Debye length. Accurate calculation

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

of the charge separation is important for the accurate calculation of the self-consistent electric field. This requires also an accurate calculation of the exact ion orbits using a kinetic equation. In the present work, we use an Eulerian Vlasov code to study the

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Charge Separation and Electric Field** 

There are number of physical situations where plasmas neutrality breaks down through boundary layers called plasma sheaths, which are either free or in contact with a wall. The plasma sheaths transition problems are at the heart of an industrial revolution whose theme is the design of matter on the molecular scale.The study of the charge separation at a plasma edge requires generally the solution of the kinetic equations of plasmas which, for a collisionless plasma, usually reduce to the well-known Vlasov equation. Some examples for the solution of the Vlasov equation for sheaths transition problems have been presented in Shoucri, 2008a, 2009a. A problem of interest is the problem involving the generation of radial electric fields and poloidal flows to achieve radial force balance at a steep density gradient in the presence of an external magnetic field. This problem is of great importance in the steep density gradients pedestal of the high confinement mode (H-mode) in tokamaks, since it largely affects the edge physics of the H-mode. In the present work, we shall study the problem of the generation of a charge separation and the associated electric field at the edge of a cylindrical plasma column, in the presence of an external magnetic field directed along the cylinder axis. In previous publications on this problem (Shoucri *et al.*, 2003, 2004, 2008b, 2009b), we have considered the case where the electrons were frozen by the magnetic field lines, with a constant density profile which changes rapidly along the gradient over an ion orbit size. Along the gradient the electrons bound by the magnetic field cannot move across this field to exactly compensate the ion charge which results from the finite ions' gyroradius. This effect is especially important for large values of the ratio

**at a Cylindrical Plasma Edge** 

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Magdi Shoucri

**1. Introduction** 

/ *i De* 

, where *<sup>i</sup>*

is the ions' gyroradius and *De*

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/48353

