Kiloelectronvolt (keV)

keV

A unit of energy used to state plasma temperature, equal to one thousand electronvolts. Plasma physicists prefer it to kelvin or Celsius because it describes the energy of the particles directly: one keV is about 11.6 million kelvin, so a headline '100 million degree' plasma is about 8.6 keV. Energies released by single fusion reactions are given in the larger unit MeV, a million electronvolts: one D-T reaction releases 17.6 MeV. Ion temperatures in this dataset are given in keV, with a kelvin conversion shown alongside on the leaderboards.

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