Feature Channels: Fusion

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Feature describes use of PPPL-provided trim coils to correct W7-X error fields during fusion experiments.

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Article describes conditions that lead to plasma chirping that signals loss of heat that can slow fusion reactions.

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Article describes use of new diagnostics to advance understanding of the plasma nanosynthesis of widely used nanoparticles.

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Scientists at PPPL have discovered key conditions that give rise to fast magnetic reconnection, the process that triggers solar flares, auroras, and geomagnetic storms that can disrupt signal transmissions and other electrical activities, including cell phone service.

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Article describes fusion breakthroughs cited by DOE Office of Science among research milestones of the past 40 years.

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Researchers at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility used a “reduced physics” fluid model of plasma turbulence to explain unexpected properties of the density profile inside a tokamak experiment. Modeling plasma’s turbulent behavior could help scientists optimize the tokamak performance in future fusion reactors like ITER. They discuss their findings in this week’s Physics of Plasmas.

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PPPL physicist Francesca Poli and coauthors recently published findings that describe an approach that for the first time simultaneously simulates the plasma, the magnetic islands, and the feedback control from waves that provide so-called electron cyclotron heating and current drive.

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A particular set of chemical reactions governs many of the processes around us—everything from bridges corroding in water to your breakfast breaking down in your gut. One crucial part of that reaction involves electrons striking water, and despite how commonplace this reaction is, scientists still have to use ballpark numbers for certain parts of the equation when they use computers to model them. A study offers a new and better set of numbers, which may help scientists and engineers create better ways to split water for hydrogen fuel and other chemical processes.

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Theoretical physicist Elena Belova named to editorial board of Physics of Plasmas

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Plasma physicists significantly improve the vertical stability of a Korean fusion device.

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A team of researchers from the University of South Carolina is using neutrons at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop more durable and efficient materials called waste forms for safely storing hazardous substances.

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Large-scale simulations of quarks promise precise view of reactions of astrophysical importance.

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Article describes development of deep learning neural network to predict disruptions of fusion plasma.

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Rural counties continue to rank lowest among counties across the U.S., in terms of health outcomes. A group of national organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National 4-H Council are leading the way to close the rural health gap.

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Direct writing of pure-metal structures may advance novel light sources, sensors and information storage technologies.

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Scientists at PPPL have completed new simulations that could provide insight into how blobs at the plasma edge behave. The simulations, produced by a code called XGC1 developed by a national team based at PPPL, performed kinetic simulations of two different regions of the plasma edge simultaneously.

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Article describes proposed design for production of steady-state plasma in future fusion power plants.

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Article describes study of cross-correlation of turbulence in tokamaks.

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Article describes simulated prediction of heat flux that ITER divertor plates will be able to tolerate.

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PPPL physicist Fatima Ebrahimi has for the first time used advanced models to accurately simulate key characteristics of the cyclic behavior of edge-localized modes, a particular type of plasma instability. The findings could help physicists more fully comprehend the behavior of plasma, the hot, charged gas that fuels fusion reactions in doughnut-shaped fusion facilities called tokamaks, and more reliably produce plasmas for fusion reactions.

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For the first time, scientists modeled the spontaneous bifurcation of turbulence to high-confinement mode, solving a 35-year-old mystery.

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Article describes use of second neutral beam injector to suppress instabilities on the NSTX-U

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Article describes PPPL's design and delivery of pole shields for DIII-D neutral beam injectors.

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Hall thrusters are used in earth-orbiting satellites and show promise to propel robotic spacecraft long distances, and the plasma ejected from the exhaust end of the thruster can deliver great speeds. Cylindrically-shaped Hall thrusters lend themselves to miniaturization and have a smaller surface-to-volume ratio that prevents erosion of the thruster channel. Investigators in China have developed a new design for CHTs that significantly increases thrust; they report their work in this week’s Physics of Plasmas.

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PPPL research performed with collaborators from Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at the State University of New York at Stony Brook has shown how plasma causes exceptionally strong, microscopic structures known as carbon nanotubes to grow.

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Particle collisions recreating the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) that filled the early universe reveal that droplets of this primordial soup swirl far faster than any other fluid. The new analysis from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) shows that the "vorticity" of the QGP surpasses the whirling fluid dynamics of super-cell tornado cores and Jupiter's Great Red Spot, and even beats out the fastest spin record held by nanodroplets of superfluid helium.

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Article describes simulation of impact of recycled atoms on plasma turbulence.

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A team of Notre Dame researchers are working in collaboration with researchers from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and the Colorado School of Mines.

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Sometimes, liquid drops don't drop. Instead, they climb. Using computer simulations, researchers have now shown how to induce droplets to climb stairs all by themselves. This stair-climbing behavior could be useful in everything from water treatment and new lab-on-a-chip microfluidic devices, to biochemical processing and medical diagnostic tools. The researchers describe their findings this week in the journal Physics of Fluids.

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Article describes first experimental finding of constant temperature throughout a fusion plasma.

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Article describes ALCC allotment of 269.9 million supercomputer hours to study the complex edge region of fusion plasmas.

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Capillary discharge plasma jets are created by a large current that passes through a low-density gas in what is called a capillary chamber. The gas ionizes and turns into plasma, a mixture of electrons and positively charged ions. When plasma expands in the capillary chamber due to arc energy heating, plasma ejects from the capillary nozzle forming the plasma jet. This week in Review of Scientific Instruments, a new study examines how the dimensions of the capillary producing the plasma affect the jet’s length.

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An international team of scientists recently discovered the role that hot electrons may play in the waves and fluctuations detected by satellites. The research team reports its findings this week in Physics of Plasmas. Their results are based on data collected by the Van Allen Probes, twin robotic spacecraft launched by NASA in 2012 to help scientists better understand these belt regions.

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Feature describes testing different lithium injectors on China's EAST tokamak.

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New findings show that features more than 100x smaller than the optical wavelength can still be sensed by light. This could pave the way for major new applications in sensing, including measuring nanometric defects in computer chips and photonic devices.

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Researchers have developed a detailed computational model of the soybean plasma membrane that provides new structural insight at the molecular level, which may have applications for studying membrane proteins and may be useful for engineering plants to produce biochemicals, biofuels, drugs and other compounds, and in understanding how plants sense and respond to stressful conditions. The group report their findings this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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Researchers perform first spectroscopic measurements on antihydrogen in pursuit of one of our biggest scientific mysteries: why is there so little antimatter in the universe?

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New work seeks to explain a strange phenomenon occurring in fusion reactor materials.

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A new type of lens improves the focusing precision at the world’s most powerful X-ray light sources.

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University of Arkansas physicists are able to accurately describe the geometric structure of gold nanobars, enabling more precise coupling of plasmonic nanostructures with light.

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A new simulation based on the von-Kármán-Sodium (VKS) dynamo experiment takes a closer look at how the liquid vortex created by the device generates a magnetic field. Researchers investigated the effects of fluid resistivity and turbulence on the collimation of the magnetic field, where the vortex becomes a focused stream. They report their findings this week in the journal Physics of Fluids.

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The most established plasma propulsion concepts are gridded-ion thrusters that accelerate and emit a larger number of positively charged particles than those that are negatively charged. To enable the spacecraft to remain charge-neutral, a “neutralizer” is used to inject electrons to exactly balance the positive ion charge in the exhaust beam. However, the neutralizer requires additional power from the spacecraft and increases the size and weight of the propulsion system. Researchers are investigating how the radio-frequency self-bias effect can be used to remove the neutralizer altogether, and they report their work in this week’s Physics of Plasmas.

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A team of physicists has found that a coating of lithium oxide on the inside of fusion machines known as tokamaks can absorb as much deuterium as pure lithium can.

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A New Amp for 5G Cell Phones, New Ultrasound Method to Analyze Cancer Cells, Synthetic Heart Valves, Discovery of Rules for CRISPR Advance Metabolic Engineering and more in the Engineering News Source

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