Tokamaks

Surprise finding challenges scientific assumptions.

State-of-the-art computer codes and world-class expertise at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) will provide four of the first 12 collaborations under the newly created Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program. The public-private partnerships, funded by the DOE Office of Science, are intended to speed the development on Earth of the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars.

The new Princeton University supercomputer, Traverse, enhances research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics (PPPL) to develop the science to bring the fusion that powers the sun and stars to Earth. Princeton officially launched the supercomputer Sept. 30 in a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the High-Performance Computing Research Center on the Forrestal campus.

How do you start a fusion reaction, the process that lights the sun and stars, on Earth? Like lighting a match to start a fire, you first produce plasma, the state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei that fuels fusion reactions, and raise it to temperatures rivaling the sun in hundreds of milliseconds.

Stefan Gerhardt, who heads research operations and serves as deputy director of the recovery project for the flagship fusion facility at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), has been elected a 2019 American Physical Society (APS) Fellow. The APS annually recognizes as fellows no more than one-half of one percent of its more than 55,000 worldwide members.