First Light of the Fireball IV Plasma Cell

Sven Steinert and Maximilian Mudra from our institute, together with David Cusick (University of Oxford), Vasiliki Stergiu (CERN HiRadMat and University of Oxford), Vasiliki Tsouknida and Prof. Jon Tomas Gudmundsson (University of Iceland), successfully achieved the first light of the upgraded Fireball IV plasma cell.

The three-meter-long plasma chamber was redesigned with a new single-coil configuration to generate a highly uniform inductively coupled plasma discharge. Using 3 kW of RF power at 13.56 MHz, we produced an argon discharge, measured the electron densities and confirmed they met the requirements for our upcoming experiments at CERN’s HiRadMat facility later this year.

It was an intense and demanding week with long days in the lab. While only a few team members are mentioned above, this milestone was made possible by the efforts of many additional colleagues at CERN and at the various home institutions who also contributed significantly to the success.