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Related papers: Combined plasma-coil optimization algorithms

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Stellarators confine fusion plasmas using three-dimensional magnetic fields composed of nested toroidal magnetic surfaces. In generic stellarators, trapped particles can drift across these surfaces and degrade plasma confinement. Certain…

In this work we describe a numerical optimization method for computing stationary MHD-equilibria. The newly developed code is based on a nonlinear force-free optimization principle. We apply our code to model the solar corona using synoptic…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2020-11-11 Thomas Wiegelmann , Thomas Neukirch , Dieter H. Nickeler , Iulia Chifu

Many stellarator coil design problems are plagued by multiple minima, where the locally optimal coil sets can sometimes vary substantially in performance. As a result, solving a coil design problem a single time with a local optimization…

Computational Physics · Physics 2024-05-22 Andrew Giuliani

Finding feasible coils for stellarator fusion devices is a critical challenge of realizing this concept for future power plants. Current design efforts struggle to navigate the highly nonconvex optimization landscape, spend considerable…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2025-09-10 Pedro F. Gil , Weiping Li , Julianne Stratton , Alan A. Kaptanoglu , Eve V. Stenson

In fusion reactor design, steels under consideration for the blanket are ferromagnetic, so the steel's effect on the plasma physics must be examined. For efficient calculation of these fields, we can exploit the fact that the magnetic…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2026-01-13 Matt Landreman , Humberto Torreblanca , Antoine Cerfon

We propose a high-order adaptive numerical solver for the semilinear elliptic boundary value problem modelling magnetic plasma equilibrium in axisymmetric confinement devices. In the fixed boundary case, the equation is posed on curved…

Computational Physics · Physics 2021-05-28 Tonatiuh Sánchez-Vizuet , Manuel E. Solano , Antoine J. Cerfon

Topology optimization, a technique to determine where material should be placed within a predefined volume in order to minimize a physical objective, is used across a wide range of scientific fields and applications. A general application…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2023-06-23 Alan A. Kaptanoglu , Gabriel P. Langlois , Matt Landreman

Most present stellarator designs are produced by costly two-stage optimization: the first for an optimized equilibrium, and the second for a coil design reproducing its magnetic configuration. Few proxies for coil complexity and forces…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2025-06-11 Lanke Fu , Elizabeth J. Paul , Alan A. Kaptanoglu , Amitava Bhattacharjee

For the representation of axi-symmetric plasma configurations, it is natural to use cyl. coordinates (R,Z,$\phi$), where $\phi$ is an independent coordinate. The same cyl. coordinates have also been widely used for representing 3D MHD…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2025-02-17 Florian J. Hindenlang , Gabriel G. Plunk , Omar Maj

Good magnetic surfaces, as opposed to magnetic islands and chaotic field lines, are generally desirable for stellarators. In previous work, M. Landreman et al. [Phys. of Plasmas 28, 092505 (2021)] showed that equilibria computed by the…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2022-04-26 A. Baillod , J. Loizu , J. P. Graves , M. Landreman

Outside the core of the plasma, the plasma current and pressure rapidly transition to zero in a scrape-off or edge region or plasma-vacuum interface. However, existing tools for fixed-boundary magnetohydrodynamic equilibria in 2D and 3D…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2026-05-05 Alan Kaptanoglu , Tobias Blickhan

We present a technique that can be used to design stellarators with a high degree of experimental flexibility. For our purposes, flexibility is defined by the range of values the rotational transform can take on the magnetic axis of the…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2022-11-10 Brandon F Lee , Elizabeth J Paul , Georg Stadler , Matt Landreman

A parallel cut-cell algorithm is described to solve the free-boundary problem of the Grad-Shafranov equation. The algorithm reformulates the free-boundary problem in an irregular bounded domain and its important aspects include a searching…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-08-31 Shuang Liu , Qi Tang , Xian-Zhu Tang

Designing superconducting coils for a tokamak fusion device is a highly coupled, non-linear design problem. The coils have many disparate engineering requirements from structural to power electronics, as well strict limits placed on the…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2025-12-19 Nathan Welch , Chris Marsden

In magnetic confinement fusion devices, the equilibrium configuration of a plasma is determined by the balance between the hydrostatic pressure in the fluid and the magnetic forces generated by an array of external coils and the plasma…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-11-24 Howard C. Elman , Jiaxing Liang , Tonatiuh Sánchez-Vizuet

In this paper, the design of the the plasma equilibrium and superconducting coils for the Electrons and Positrons in an Optimized Stellarator EPOS experiment is presented. With newly developed stellarator optimization tools, including…

The Columbia Stellarator eXperiment (CSX), currently being designed at Columbia University, aims to test theoretical predictions related to QA plasma behavior, and to pioneer the construction of an optimized stellarator using…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2024-09-10 A. Baillod , E. J. Paul , G. Rawlinson , M. Haque , S. W. Freiberger , S. Thapa

Equilibria in magnetic confinement devices result from force balancing between the Lorentz force and the plasma pressure gradient. In an axisymmetric configuration like a tokamak, such an equilibrium is described by an elliptic equation for…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-06-13 Daniel A. Serino , Qi Tang , Xian-Zhu Tang , Tzanio V. Kolev , Konstantin Lipnikov

Stellarator fusion devices confine plasma by means of complex, non-planar electromagnetic coils. Understanding how the shape of the plasma boundary determines the required complexity of the coil set is a central open question in stellarator…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2026-05-19 Andrea Pavone , Sehyun Kwak , Felix Warmer

The Poisson-Boltzmann equation offers an efficient way to study electrostatics in molecular settings. Its numerical solution with the boundary element method is widely used, as the complicated molecular surface is accurately represented by…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2021-08-25 Stefan D. Search , Christopher D. Cooper , Elwin van't Wout