Optimization of the current potential for stellarator coils
- Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027 (United States)
Stellarator plasma confinement devices have no continuous symmetries, which makes the design of appropriate coils far more subtle than for axisymmetric devices such as tokamaks. The modern method for designing coils for stellarators was developed by Peter Merkel [P. Merkel, Nucl. Fusion 27, 867 (1987)]. Although his method has yielded a number of successful stellarator designs, Merkel's method has a systematic tendency to give coils with a larger current than that required to produce a stellarator plasma with certain properties. In addition, Merkel's method does not naturally lead to a coil set with the flexibility to produce a number of interesting plasma configurations. The issues of coil efficiency and flexibility are addressed in this paper by a new method of optimizing the current potential, the first step in Merkel's method. The new method also allows the coil design to be based on a freer choice for the plasma-coil separation and to be constrained so space is preserved for plasma access. (c) 2000 American Institute of Physics.
- OSTI ID:
- 20215194
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 7, Issue 2; Other Information: PBD: Feb 2000; ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Computing the shape gradient of stellarator coil complexity with respect to the plasma boundary
Modular Coil Design for the Ultra-low Aspect Ratio Quasi-axially Symmetric Stellarator MHH2