Design and initial results from the "Junior" Levitated Dipole Experiment
Abstract
OpenStar Technologies is a private fusion company exploring the levitated dipole concept for commercial fusion energy production. OpenStar has manufactured a new generation of levitated dipole experiment, called "Junior", leveraging recent advances made in high-temperature superconducting magnet technologies. Junior houses a ~5.6 T REBCO high-temperature superconducting magnet in a 5.2 m vacuum chamber, with plasma heating achieved via < 50 kW of electron cyclotron resonance heating power. Importantly, this experiment integrates novel high temperature superconductor power supply technology on board the dipole magnet. Recently OpenStar has completed first experimental campaigns with the Junior experiment, achieving first plasmas in late 2024. Experiments conducted with the full levitated system are planned for 2025. This article provides an overview of the main results from these experiments and details improvements planned for future campaigns.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2508.17691,
title = {Design and initial results from the "Junior" Levitated Dipole Experiment},
author = {Craig S. Chisholm and Thomas Berry and Darren T. Garnier and Rodney A. Badcock and Gabriel Bioletti and Konstantinos Bouloukakis and Emily-Kei Brewerton and Mike A. Buchanan and Pierce J. Burt and Eleanor V. W. Chambers and Kris B. Chappell and Patrick Coulson and Ryan J. Davidson and Josh P. M. Ellingham and Piet Geursen and Kent Hamilton and Raymond Hu and Emily Hunter and Joseph P. Jones and Plaso Kusay and Zvonko Lazić and Bradley Leuw and Matthew Lynch and Ratu Mataira and Mick McCrohon and Les Meadows and Jack R. Morris and Ryan Nowacki and Jack V. Purvis and James H. P. Rice and Michael Rutten and Samuel Schimanski and Aaryan Sharma and Mohammad Siamaki and Alex Simpson and Thomas Simpson and Benjamin Smith and Eric Stiers and Emerson Swanson-Dobbs and Joe Todd and Eddyn O. P. Treacher and Jared D. Tyler and Sriharsha Venturumilli and Hubertus W. Weijers and Theodore Wordsworth and Nancy Zhou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.17691},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
8 pages, 7 figures