Principal Investigator

H J Gardner Theoretical Physics, RSPhysSE, ANU

Project Title

3D MHD Equilibrium and Stability

Brief Description for General Publications

For some decades there has been an international scientific and engineering program to study the containment of plasmas by toroidal magnetic fields with the aim of developing a fusion power reactor. Australia presently makes a major contribution to this program through the H-1NF Heliac which is a "stellarator" experiment located at ANU and is funded through the Major National Research Facility Program. Stellarators are an alternative to the better known "tokamak" types of experiments but have the great advantage of not needing large currents within the plasma in order to generate helical field lines. On the debit side, the lack of axial symmetry of stellarators makes their theory more complicated and simulation more computationally expensive than for tokamaks. In particular, the simply nested magnetic surfaces found in tokamaks can be broken and give rise to magnetic islands and regions of chaotic magnetic field lines. Present activities under this project are focussed on the area of 3D Resistive MHD Resistive Stability.