Three vacuum vessels comprise the vacuum envelope of MFTF-B. The design specifications are given for each. (MOW)

The Mirror Fusion Test Facility (MFTF) vacuum vessel and cryopumping system have attracted considerable interest within the fusion research community. Their extreme size, coupled with severe performance requirements and unique design features, justifies this interest. The planned expansion of the system to a tandem mirror configuration with thermal barriers further increases the engineering challenges of this complex facility.

Resonant absorption is investigated in expanding plasmas. The momentum deposition associated with the ejection of hot electrons toward low density via wavebreaking readily exceeds that of the incident laser radiation and results in significant modification of the density profile at critical. New scaling of hot electron temperature with laser and plasma parameters is presented.

The Mirror Fusion Test Facility (MFTF) is a large mirror program experiment for magnetic fusion energy. It will combine and extend the near-classical plasma confinement achieved in 2XIIB with advanced neutral-beam and magnet technologies. The product of ion density and confinement time will be improved more than an order of magnitude, while the superconducting magnet weight will be extrapolated from 15 tons in Baseball II to 375 tons in MFTF. Recent reactor studies show that the MFTF will traverse much of the distance in magnet technology towards the reactor regime.