Back to the Figure-8 Stellarator
Abstract
The first stellarator design was a simple tube of plasma twisted and closed on itself in the form of a figure-8. The line of such devices, however, was quickly ended over concerns related to plasma stability. We revisit the figure-8 concept, re-imagined as a modern optimized stellarator, and find the potential for a high degree of stability, as well as exceptionally simple construction. In particular, the design that we find admits planar coils, and is the first quasi-isodynamic stellarator design to have this property. Our work is made possible by recent theoretical progress in the near-axis theory of quasi-isodynamic stellarators, combined with fundamental progress in the numerical solution of three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic equilibria that cannot be well represented using traditional cylindrical coordinates.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2411.16411,
title = {Back to the Figure-8 Stellarator},
author = {G. G. Plunk and M. Drevlak and E. Rodriguez and R. Babin and A. Goodman and F. Hindenlang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.16411},
year = {2025}
}