Helically Symmetric Experiment


The Helically Symmetric Experiment, is an experimental plasma confinement device at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with design principles that are intended to be incorporated into a fusion reactor. The HSX is a modular coil stellarator which is a toroid-shaped pressure vessel with external electromagnets which generate a magnetic field for the purpose of containing a plasma. It began operation in 1999.

Background

A stellarator is a magnetic confinement fusion device which generates all required magnetic fields to confine high temperature plasma by external magnetic coils. In contrast, in tokamaks and reversed field pinches the magnetic field is created by the interaction of external magnets and an electrical current flowing through the plasma. The lack of this large externally driven plasma currents makes stellarators suitable for steady-state fusion power plant.
However, due to non-axisymmetric nature of the fields, conventional stellarators have a combination of toroidal and helical modulation of the magnetic field lines that leads to high transport of plasma out of the confinement volume at fusion relevant conditions. This large transport in conventional stellarators can limit their performance as a fusion reactor.
This problem can be largely reduced by tailoring the magnetic field geometry. The dramatic improvements in computer modeling capability in the last two decades has helped to "optimize" the magnetic geometry to reduce this transport, resulting in a new class of stellarators called "quasi-symmetric stellarators". Computer-modeled odd-looking electromagnets will directly produce the needed magnetic field configuration. These devices combine the good confinement properties of tokamaks and the steady-state nature of conventional stellarators. The Helically Symmetric Experiment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is such a quasi-helically symmetric stellarator.

Device

The magnetic field in HSX is generated by a set of 48 twisted coils arranged in four field periods. HSX typically operates at a magnetic field of 1 Tesla at the center of the plasma column. A set of auxiliary coils is used to deliberately break the symmetry to mimic conventional stellarator properties for comparison.
HSX vacuum vessel is made of stainless steel, and is helically shaped to follow the magnetic geometry.
Plasma formation and heating is achieved using 28 GHz, 100 kW electron cyclotron resonance heating. A second 100 kW gyrotron has recently been installed on HSX to perform heat pulse modulation studies.

Operations

Plasmas as high as 3 kiloelectronvolts in temperature and about 8/cc in density are routinely formed for various experiments.

Subsystems, diagnostics

HSX has a large set of diagnostics to measure properties of plasma and magnetic fields. The following gives a list of major diagnostics and subsystems.
HSX has made and continues to make fundamental contributions to the physics of quasisymmetric stellarators that show significant improvement over the conventional stellarator concept. These include:
A large number of experimental and computational research works are being done in HSX by students, staff and faculties. Some of them are in collaboration with other universities and national laboratories, both in the USA and abroad. Major research projects at present are listed below:
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