Stellarators are a promising type of fusion reactor that can run in steady-state with a low risk of disrupting. They need to be optimized for good particle confinement, however, and their complicated geometry makes these calculations expensive. We have developed the code DESC to compute three-dimensional equilibria by solving the magnetohydrodynamic force balance equations. DESC is an open-source, 3D ideal MHD equilibrium solver and optimization code suite, designed to be the modern stellarator optimization and design tool, able to quickly and accurately solve the 3D ideal MHD equilibrium equations and obtain optimized stellarator designs while satisfying physics and engineering constraints.
The Plasma Control group is actively looking for new research scholars, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students to conduct research on stellarator optimization. You can reach out to Prof. Kolemen directly if you would like to join our group.
Theory publication: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/5.0020743
Public GitHub repository: https://github.com/PlasmaControl/DESC
Code documentation: https://desc-docs.readthedocs.io/
Check out our recent presentations at APS-DPP 2022!
D. Dudt, R. Conlin, D. Panici, P. Kim, K. Unalmis, and E. Kolemen “Efficient Stellarator Optimization and Analysis with DESC” APS-DPP, October 2022. pdf
R. Conlin, J. Schiling, D. Dudt, D. Panici, P. Kim, K.E. Unalmis, and E. Kolemen “Free Boundary Stellarator Equilibria and Coil Optimization in DESC” APS-DPP, October 2022. pdf
D. Panici, D.W. Dudt, R. Conlin, K. Unalmis, P. Kim, and E. Kolemen “Minimal Poincare Boundary Condition for 3D MHD Equilibria” APS-DPP, October 2022. pdf
Recent Publications
Dudt, D., Conlin, R., Panici, D., & Kolemen, E. (2023). The DESC stellarator code suite Part 3: Quasi-symmetry optimization. Journal of Plasma Physics, 89(2), 955890201. doi:10.1017/S0022377823000235 arxiv pdf article
Conlin, R., Dudt, D., Panici, D., & Kolemen, E. (2023). The DESC stellarator code suite. Part 2. Perturbation and continuation methods. Journal of Plasma Physics, 89(3), 955890305. doi:10.1017/S0022377823000399 arxiv pdf article
Panici, D., Conlin, R., Dudt, D. W., Unalmis, K., & Kolemen, E. (2023). The DESC stellarator code suite. Part 1. Quick and accurate equilibria computations. Journal of Plasma Physics, 89(3), Article A373. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022377823000272 arxiv pdf article