The results of a series of experimental measurements of compact toroidal (CT) plasmas produced by a magnetized coaxial plasma gun injecting into a flux‐conserving metallic liner are reported. The experiments were performed on the Beta II facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The magnetic equilibria are well described by a force‐free eigenmode structure that results from an extension of Taylor’s theory of the reversed‐field pinch. Consideration of helicity conservation during relaxation of the composite plasma‐gun flux‐conserver system to the final state equilibrium yields theoretical expressions that are compared with the experiment. In particular the CT poloidal flux (&psgr;pol) and the overall electrical efficiency for producing the CT are predicted to be functions of the plasma gun inner‐electrode flux (&psgr;gun) and the volt‐seconds input to the gun discharge (∫∞0 V dt). Away from a cutoff at too low values of ∫∞0 V dtor too high values, &psgr;gun,&psgr;polscales linearly with the square root of the product of &psgr;gunand ∫∞0V dt, whereas the electrical efficiency equals about 13% for ∫∞0V dt/&psgr;gun≊10. For an electrical energy inputWin=45 kJ, CT’s are produced with poloidal plus toroidal field energy up toWB=8 kJ and toroidal plasma currentItor=330 kA. The chord‐averaged plasma density is 2–4×1014cm−3, and the plasma volume equals 150 liters. The radius of the flux conserver is 37.5 cm, and the axial length is 40 cm. If a bias flux &psgr;bis superimposed on the flux conserver,n=1 tilting is observed when &psgr;b/&psgr;polexceeds a ratio of about 0.20 to 0.25. Impurity radiation measured by a pyroelectric detector accounts for all of the plasma magnetic energy if uniform volume emission of radiation is assumed. The dominant impurities observed are carbon and oxygen. Helium‐like lines are not observed, indicating that the plasma has not ‘‘burned through’’ the low electron temperature radiation maxima. The experimentally observed decay times (defined by thee‐folding time of plasma magnetic fields) are 80 to 160 &mgr;sec—consistent withZeff=2 andTein the range 5–10 eV if classical resistivity is assumed. A zero‐dimensional rate equation model of impurity radiation loss gives a reasonably good account of the experimental observations and predicts that the carbon concentration must be reduced to the level of a few percent to allow burnthrough of the low‐Tecarbon radiation barrier. Glow discharge cleaning of the gun electrodes and flux conserver resulted in a 20% increase of thee‐folding time of plasma magnetic fields (from an average value 115 to 140 &mgr;sec). The CT plasma density was observed to scale linearly with the electrical energy input to the gun discharge and to be only weakly dependent on the filling pressure and timing of pulsed deuterium gas valves. It seems likely that further improvements in increasing plasma lifetime can be made by improving the vacuum conditions and discharge cleaning methods and experimenting with the gun electrode materials.