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Representing the boundary of stellarator plasmas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2021

S.A. Henneberg*
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Wendelsteinstr. 1, 17489 Greifswald, Germany
P. Helander
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Wendelsteinstr. 1, 17489 Greifswald, Germany
M. Drevlak
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Wendelsteinstr. 1, 17489 Greifswald, Germany
*
Email address for correspondence: sophia.henneberg@ipp.mpg.de
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Abstract

In stellarator optimization studies, the boundary of the plasma is usually described by Fourier series that are not unique: several sets of Fourier coefficients describe approximately the same boundary shape. A simple method for eliminating this arbitrariness is proposed and shown to work well in practice.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Circle (green) with radius $b=(z_{\max }-z_{\min })/2$, twice the total extent in the $Z$-direction of the plasma boundary (blue). The poloidal angle is chosen to be equal to the polar angle of the horizontal projection of each boundary point on this circle.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Circle (green) with radius $b=(\zeta _{\max }-\zeta _{\min })/2$ and the boundary (blue). The poloidal angle $\theta$ is the polar angle of the projection in the $\rho$-direction onto the circle.

Figure 2

Figure 3. The cost function $Q(R_1,Z_1)$ with respect to $R_1$ and $Z_1$ with all other Fourier harmonics equal to zero $R_i=Z_i=0$, $i>1$.

Figure 3

Figure 4. The cost function $Q(R_1=0.0,R_2,Z_1=0.7,Z_2)$ with respect to $R_2$ and $Z_2$.

Figure 4

Figure 5. The minimized cost function $\min _{R_2,Z_2}Q(R_1,R_2,Z_1,Z_2)$ with respect to $R_1$ and $Z_1$.

Figure 5

Figure 6. The three minima of $Q(R_1,R_2,Z_1,Z_2)$. Global minima (blue): axisymmetric torus with unit circle cross-section described by $R_1= Z_1=1, R_2= Z_2=0$ and $R_1=Z_1=0, R_2=Z_2=1$ ($R_i=0$ for all $i>2$). Local minimum (grey): $R_1=0.0, R_2\approx 1.05, Z_1=1.15$ and $Z_2=0.0$: (a) the poloidal cross-section; (b) three-dimensional (3-D) view.

Figure 6

Figure 7. The minimized cost function $\min _{R_2,Z_2,R_3,Z_3}Q(R_1,R_2,R_3,Z_1,Z_2,Z_3)$ with respect to $R_1$ and $Z_1$. Differential Evolution, a global optimization routine, is used to find the minima.

Figure 7

Figure 8. The locally minimized cost function $\min _{R_3,Z_3}Q(R_1=0.18,R_2,R_3,Z_1=0.4,Z_2,Z_3)$ as a function of $R_2$ and $Z_2$.

Figure 8

Figure 9. The cost function $Q(R_1=0.18,R_2=x,R_3,Z_1=0.4,Z_2=y,Z_3)$ with respect to $R_3$ and $Z_3$: (a) $x=0.24$ and $y=0.39$; (b) $x=0.5$ and $y=0.5$; (c) $x=1.0$ and $y=1.0$.

Figure 9

Figure 10. The minimized cost function $\min _{R_2,R_3}Q(R_1,R_2,R_3,Z_1)$ with respect to $R_1$ and $Z_1$.

Figure 10

Figure 11. The minimized cost function $\min _{R_2,R_3,R_4,R_5} Q(R_1,R_2,R_3,R_4,R_5,Z_1$ with respect to $R_1$ and $Z_1$: (a) using a non-global optimization algorithm; (b) using Differential Evolution – a global optimization routine.

Figure 11

Figure 12. D shape and bean shape reproduced based on Hirshman & Meier (1985), where the solution of our boundary representation overlaps with the original boundary: (a) D shape; (b) Bean shape.

Figure 12

Figure 13. The boundary at different toroidal angle of Wendelstein 7-X. The original overlaps mostly with the replication.

Figure 13

Figure 14. Flux surfaces at different toroidal cross-sections of rotating ellipse at toroidal angle $\varphi =0^{\circ }$ (green), $45^{\circ }$ (dark blue) and $90^{\circ }$ (cyan).

Figure 14

Figure 15. The poloidal cross-sections of optimized plasma boundary and flux surfaces with simple penalty function for the toroidal angles $\varphi =0^{\circ }$ (green), $45^{\circ }$ (dark blue) and $90^{\circ }$ (cyan): (a) cross-sections of optimized plasma boundary using standard VMEC boundary representation; (b) cross-sections of optimized plasma boundary using unique boundary representation described in § 4.