Confirmation of the topology of the Wendelstein 7-X magnetic field to better than 1:100,000
Name
Confirmation of the.pdf
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1.62 MB
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Adobe PDF
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Author(s)
Maisano-Brown, Jeannette D.
Date Issued
February 2017
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Pedersen, T. Sunn et al. “Confirmation of the Topology of the Wendelstein 7-X Magnetic Field to Better than 1:100,000.” Nature Communications 7 (2016): 13493.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Fusion energy research has in the past 40 years focused primarily on the tokamak concept, but recent advances in plasma theory and computational power have led to renewed interest in stellarators. The largest and most sophisticated stellarator in the world, Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), has just started operation, with the aim to show that the earlier weaknesses of this concept have been addressed successfully, and that the intrinsic advantages of the concept persist, also at plasma parameters approaching those of a future fusion power plant. Here we show the first physics results, obtained before plasma operation: that the carefully tailored topology of nested magnetic surfaces needed for good confinement is realized, and that the measured deviations are smaller than one part in 100,000. This is a significant step forward in stellarator research, since it shows that the complicated and delicate magnetic topology can be created and verified with the required accuracy.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13493
