Iowa Q-Machine 2 (IQ-2)

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The second Q-machine constructed at the University of Iowa, IQ-2 is located in Room B04 of Van Allen Hall. IQ-2 is a double ended Q-machine (two hot plate assemblies, on either end of the machine) and provides a plasma column 6 cm in diameter, and 140 cm in length. The plasma column is confined by radial magnetic field, which can be altered to give strengths up to 7 kG. IQ-2 also has seperate facilities for cooling the magnets, and the walls of the vacuum chamber. The magnets are cooled by a self-contained system, which consists of a cooling tower located next to Van Allen Hall. (In the picture, the red tubes are filled with ethelyne glycol, which was used to cool the magnets) IQ-2 has been used in studies of basic waves and instabilities in plasmas, capable of producing higher plasma densities than a single ended machine. Most recently, IQ-2 was used to study the velocity shear instablility in the presence of neutral atom collisions, with both uniform and diverging magnetic field configurations.