The CV apparatus was constructed for experiments on cryogenic pure electron plasmas. Using ultra-high vacuums ( 2 x 10^-11 torr ) and Cryogenics, CV could sustain pure-electron plasmas of temperature ranging from 25 to 2 x 10⁶ . The trap was a Penning-Malmberg trap in which the plasma was contained radially by a magnetic field of strength 20 to 20K Gauss, and contained axially by an electrostatic field. Plasma was created and initially trapped at a temperature of 10⁴K. Plasma could then by heated by axial compression and relaxation (which heats since the process is non-adiabatic); and it naturally cooled due to cyclotron-radiation.

As with the CamV and EV experiments, measurement of the plasma in CV was a destructive process requiring dumping of the plasma. This dumping was accomplished by ramping the negative potential on one of the end cylindrical electrodes to zero. The plasma streamed out along the magnetic field lines onto a series of charge collection plates.

Experiments on CV were the basis for three Ph.D. theses:
Bret Beck made the first measurements of perp-parallel collisionality in the strongly magnetized regime;
Brian Cluggish characterized asymmetry-induced transport and "rotational pumping";
and James Danielson characterized Landau damping and trapping oscillations of plasma modes.

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