- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Research

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Letter
  • Open Access

Compact stellarator-tokamak hybrid

S. A. Henneberg* and G. G. Plunk

  • *Sophia.henneberg@ipp.mpg.de
PDF

Phys. Rev. Research 6, L022052 – Published 4 June, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.L022052

Abstract

Tokamaks and stellarators are the leading two magnetic confinement devices for producing fusion energy, begging the question of whether the strengths of the two could be merged into a single concept. To meet this challenge, we propose a first-of-its kind optimized stellarator-tokamak hybrid. Compared to a typical tokamak coil set, only a single simple type of stellarator coil has to be added which leads to a compact, volume- and transport-preserving magnetic field, with an added rotational transform that reaches levels thought to enhance stability.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (30)

  1. P. E. Moroz, Spherical stellarator configuration, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 651 (1996).
  2. P. E. Moroz, Extreme low aspect ratio stellarators, Phys. Lett. A 243, 60 (1998).
  3. K. Yamazaki and Y. Abe, TOKASTAR: a tokamak-stellarator hybrid with possible bean-shaped operation, Technical Report, Nagoya University, Japan, 1985.
  4. W. V.-A. Team, Stabilization of the (2, 1) tearing mode and of the current disruption in the W VII-A stellarator, Nucl. Fusion 20, 1093 (1980).
  5. M. Hirsch, J. Baldzuhn, C. Beidler, R. Brakel, R. Burhenn, A. Dinklage, H. Ehmler, M. Endler, V. Erckmann, Y. Feng, J. Geiger, L. Giannone, G. Grieger, P. Grigull, H.-J. Hartfuss, D. Hartmann, R. Jaenicke, R. Koenig, H. Laqua, H. Maassberg et al., Major results from the stellarator Wendelstein 7-AS, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 50, 053001 (2008).
  6. M. D. Pandya, M. C. ArchMiller, M. R. Cianciosa, D. A. Ennis, J. D. Hanson, G. J. Hartwell, J. D. Hebert, J. L. Herfindal, S. F. Knowlton, X. Ma, S. Massidda, D. A. Maurer, N. A. Roberds, and P. J. Traverso, Low edge safety factor operation and passive disruption avoidance in current carrying plasmas by the addition of stellarator rotational transform, Phys. Plasmas 22, 110702 (2015).
  7. G. J. Hartwell, S. F. Knowlton, J. D. Hanson, D. A. Ennis, and D. A. Maurer, Design, construction, and operation of the compact toroidal hybrid, Fusion Sci. Technol. 72, 76 (2017).
  8. M. Landreman and E. Paul, Magnetic fields with precise quasisymmetry for plasma confinement, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 035001 (2022).
  9. J. Nührenberg, W. Lotz, and S. Gori, Quasi-axisymmetric tokamaks, edited by E. Sindoni, F. Troyon, & J. Vaclavic, in Theory of Fusion Plasmas: Proceedings of the Joint Varenna-Lausanne International Workshop (Editrice Compositori., Bologna, 1994), pp. 3–12.
  10. P. Helander, Theory of plasma confinement in non-axisymmetric magnetic fields, Rep. Prog. Phys. 77, 087001 (2014).
  11. A. Boozer, Plasma equilibrium with rational magnetic-surfaces, Phys. Fluids 24, 1999 (1981).
  12. M. C. Zarnstorff, L. A. Berry, A. Brooks, E. Fredrickson, G.-Y. Fu, S. Hirshman, S. Hudson, L.-P. Ku, E. Lazarus, D. Mikkelsen, D. Monticello, G. H. Neilson, N. Pomphrey, A. Reiman, D. Spong, D. Strickler, A. Boozer, W. A. Cooper, R. Goldston, R. Hatcher et al., Physics of the compact advanced stellarator NCSX, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 43, A237 (2001).
  13. M. Drevlak, F. Brochard, P. Helander, J. Kisslinger, M. Mikhailov, C. Nührenberg, J. Nührenberg, and Y. Turkin, ESTELL: A quasi-toroidally symmetric stellarator, Contrib. Plasma Phys. 53, 459 (2013).
  14. S. Henneberg, M. Drevlak, C. Nührenberg, C. Beidler, Y. Turkin, J. Loizu, and P. Helander, Properties of a new quasi-axisymmetric configuration, Nucl. Fusion 59, 026014 (2019).
  15. G. G. Plunk and P. Helander, Quasi-axisymmetric magnetic fields: weakly non-axisymmetric case in a vacuum, J. Plasma Phys. 84, 905840205 (2018).
  16. G. G. Plunk, Perturbing an axisymmetric magnetic equilibrium to obtain a quasi-axisymmetric stellarator, J. Plasma Phys. 86, 905860409 (2020).
  17. M. Landreman, Mapping the space of quasisymmetric stellarators using optimized near-axis expansion, J. Plasma Phys. 88, 905880616 (2022).
  18. S. A. Henneberg, S. R. Hudson, D. Pfefferlé, and P. Helander, Combined plasma-coil optimization algorithms, J. Plasma Phys. 87, 905870226 (2021).
  19. M. Landreman, B. Medasani, F. Wechsung, A. Giuliani, R. Jorge, and C. Zhu, Simsopt: A flexible framework for stellarator optimization, J. Open Source Software 6, 3525 (2021).
  20. B. Medasani, F. Wechsung, M. Landreman, E. Paul, A. Giuliani, R. Jorge, R. Gaur, C. Zhu, D. Stańczak-Marikin, Z. Qu, daringli, & tmqian, hiddenSymmetries/simsopt, Zenodo (2022), doi:10.5281/zenodo.7221578.
  21. V. Shafranov and L. Zakharov, Use of the virtual-casing principle in calculating the containing magnetic field in toroidal plasma systems, Nucl. Fusion 12, 599 (1972).
  22. S. Hirshman and J. Whitson, Steepest-descent moment method for 3-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic equilibria, Phys. Fluids 26, 3553 (1983).
  23. V. Nemov, S. Kasilov, W. Kernbichler, and M. Heyn, Evaluation of 1/nu neoclassical transport in stellarators, Phys. Plasmas 6, 4622 (1999).
  24. M. Drevlak, C. Beidler, J. Geiger, P. Helander, and Y. Turkin, Optimisation of stellarator equilibria with rose, Nucl. Fusion 59, 016010 (2019).
  25. J. Wesson, Tokamaks, 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2004).
  26. C. Beidler, K. Allmaier, M. Isaev, S. Kasilov, W. Kernbichler, G. Leitold, H. Maassberg, D. Mikkelsen, S. Murakami, M. Schmidt, D. Spong, V. Tribaldos, and A. Wakasa, Benchmarking of the mono-energetic transport coefficients-results from the International Collaboration on Neoclassical Transport in Stellarators (ICNTS), Nucl. Fusion 51, 076001 (2011).
  27. C. G. Albert, S. V. Kasilov, and W. Kernbichler, Accelerated methods for direct computation of fusion alpha particle losses within, stellarator optimization, J. Plasma Phys. 86, 815860201 (2020).
  28. C. G. Albert, S. V. Kasilov, and W. Kernbichler, Symplectic integration with non-canonical quadrature for guiding-center orbits in magnetic confinement devices, J. Comput. Phys. 403, 109065 (2020).
  29. F. Najmabadi, A. R. Raffray, and The ARIES-CS Team, The ARIES-CS compact stellarator fusion power plant, Fusion Sci. Technol. 54, 655 (2008).
  30. O. Neubauer, G. Czymek, B. Giesen, P. W. Hüttemann, M. Sauer, W. Schalt, and J. Schruff, Design features of the tokamak textor, Fusion Sci. Technol. 47, 76 (2005).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Research 6, L022052– Published 4 June, 2024
  • Received 12 January 2024
  • Accepted 6 May 2024
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by Max Planck Society.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation