Related papers: Revisiting confinement scalings and fusion perform…
Force-free extrapolations are widely used to study the magnetic field in the solar corona based on surface measurements. The extrapolations assume that the ratio of internal energy of the plasma to magnetic energy, the plasma-beta is…
A central unresolved question in fusion energy research is whether energetic alpha particles, the primary products of deuterium-tritium fusion reactions, enhance or degrade plasma confinement. In burning plasmas, the operating regime of…
Proton-Boron fusion requires extreme ion temperatures and robust confinement, making Spherical Tokamaks (ST) with high-power neutral beam injection primary candidates. In these devices, strong toroidal rotation and the large mass disparity…
The key basis for tokamak plasma disruption modeling is to understand how currents flow to the plasma facing surfaces during plasma disruption events. In ITER tokamak, the occurrence of a limited number of major disruptions will…
The RAPTOR code is used to model how the time required for controlled termination of Ohmic plasmas scales from present tokamaks like TCV and JET, to reactor-grade tokamaks like ITER and DEMO. We show that ramping the plasma current $I_p$…
The high confinement mode (H-mode), the most important operation mode for the nuclear fusion reactor, has been studied for 42 years, but the transition mechanism has not been unanimously agreed so far. Four decades of H-mode experiments…
Magnetic fusion aims to confine high-temperature plasma within a device, enabling the fusion of deuterium and tritium nuclei to release energy. Due to the very large temperatures involved, it is essential to isolate the plasma from the…
Although lower hybrid waves are effective at driving currents in present-day tokamaks, they are expected to interact strongly with high-energy particles in extrapolating to reactors. In the presence of a radial alpha particle birth…
Centrifugal plasma traps, in which plasma is confined partly by centrifugal forces, represent a possible path to fusion energy production. In centrifugal plasma traps, electric fields naturally arise in the direction parallel to the…
Reduction of the peak heat loads on the plasma facing components is essential for the success of the next generation of high fusion power tokamaks such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) 1 . Many present concepts…
Mass flows and radial electric field driven by edge poloidal density asymmetries can be used as a highly effective control mechanism for the edge and thus global confinement in tokamaks. The underlying physics can be demonstrated entirely…
To rigorously model fast ions in fusion plasmas, a non-Maxwellian equilibrium distribution must be used. In the work, the response of high-energy alpha particles to electrostatic turbulence has been analyzed for several different tokamak…
We present particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of minority energetic protons in deuterium plasmas, which demonstrate a collective instability responsible for emission near the lower hybrid frequency and its harmonics. The simulations capture…
In this paper, we consider an open-loop, finite-time, optimal control problem of attaining a specific desired current profile during the ramp-up phase by finding the best open-loop actuator input trajectories. Average density, total power,…
This work presents the compact experimental negative triangularity reactor (CENTAUR), a low overnight cost, high-field tokamak, breakeven reactor design, achieving a predicted total fusion power of 40MW and scientific energy gain of 1.3.…
In thermonuclear plasmas, plasma ions undergoing nuclear reactions emit gamma-rays with energies in the MeV range. Their spectroscopy can convey much plasma information, such as the DT fusion power, the spatial and velocity distributions of…
This paper presents a numerical investigation of isolated filament dynamics in a simulation geometry representative of the scrape-off layer (SOL) of the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) previously studied in [N.R.Walkden et.al, Plasma…
In inertial confinement fusion, the scientific issues include the generation and transport of driver energy, the pellet design, the uniform target implosion physics, the realistic nuclear fusion reactor design, etc. In this paper, we…
This paper is focused on three points: (1) Overcoming obstacles to tokamak power plants may require a configuration modification as large as that of a stellarator. (2) The demonstrated reliability of the computational design of stellarators…
Power exhaust is one of the main challenges for the realization of practical fusion energy production. The magnetic confinement approach to fusion often uses a divertor configuration, where power loads are critical. Recent SOLPS simulations…