Stellarator

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A stellarator is a magnetic confinement device. The rotational transform is predominantly generated by external coils - as opposed to a tokamak, in which the poloidal field is generated by plasma currents. Hybrid concepts (including the concepts known as quasi-axisymmetry and quasi-omnigeneity) employ both external coils and self-generated (bootstrap) currents (e.g. NCSX).

NCSX plasma vessel.

Defunct stellarators

  • ATF (Oak Ridge, TN, USA)
  • CHS (Japan)
  • NCSX (Princeton, NJ, USA) - cancelled before construction was completed
  • W7-AS (Garching, Germany, 1988-2002)

Operational stellarators

  • CAT/CTH (Auburn, USA)
  • H-1NF (Canberra, Australia)
  • Heliotron-J (Kyoto, Japan)
  • HSX (Madison, WI, USA)
  • LHD (Toki, Japan)
  • TJ-II (Madrid, Spain)
  • TJ-K (Stuttgart, Germany) - formerly TJ-IU
  • TU Heliac (Tohoku Univ., Sendai, Japan)
  • UST-1 (Spain) - tabletop experiment
  • WEGA (Greifswald, Germany)

Future stellarators

  • W7-X (under construction, Greifswald, Germany)
  • QPS (in design phase, TN, USA)

See also