Trapping and Confinement of Relativistic Electron Rings in a Stabilized Mirror Field without Conducting Wall

Experimental studies indicate that electron rings can be trapped and confined in Astron geometry without a stabilizing conducting wall if a quadrupole-Ioffe or toroidal magnetic field is applied. The ring characteristics are similar to those previously observed in the presence of a conducting wall. All rings trapped with a toroidal field appear to be stably confined. In a Ioffe field, rings with axial self-fields $\delta B\lesssim 0.6B_0$ exhibit a faster-than-usual initial ring decay.