Mathematical Sciences - Colloquium

To confine a high temperature fusion plasma, magnetic fields must be used since any material wall would be vaporized by contact with a plasma with a temperature greater than 10,000,000 K.  The most promising configurations for a magnetic fusion reactor are toroidal with magnetic field lines mapping out a set of nested toroidal surfaces.  The charged plasma particles, ions and electrons, would ideally stay close to a magnetic surface.  However, the curvature and toroidicity of the magnetic field lines causes the particles to drift away from the surface and some particles are lost from the plasma.  In order to “let the physics design the experiment,” an optimization code has been developed that selects a configuration which minimizes particle losses, maintains plasma stability, and achieves other desired targets.  The task often involves optimizing with 40+ independent variables and thousands of dependent constraints.  This project is a collaboration between researchers at The University of Montana and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  I will present an overview of this research and some of the surprising and promising results.

Spring 2000 Colloquium Schedule | Mathematical Sciences home | The University of Montana home