Research Projects

The following is a partial list of topics being researched by the members of the UM Plasma Physics Group along with a brief explanation of some of the topics. For a more basic discussion of what is a plasma and fusion energy, see the educational web sites of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and General Atomics.

• Flows and transport in the Helically Symmetric Experiment
  
  
  This project is a collaboration with scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It involves numerical modeling of flow generation and the transport of heat and particles in the HSX Stellarator Experiment.
  
  

  Ideal MHD Stability of High-Beta Compact Stellarators
  
  

  Plasma physicists measure the plasma pressure in terms of the plasma beta, which is defined as the ratio of the pressure to the magnetic field strength squared. As the plasma beta is increased, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities arise in the plasma. We do numerical calculations of the equilibrium and stability properties of compact magnetic confinement devices at high plasma beta.
  
  

  Feedback control of turbulence and turbulent transport in a linear plasma
  
  

  This is a collaboration with Mark Gilmore at the University of New Mexico and Eugenio Schuster at Lehigh University. The goal of our portion of this project is to model flow generation and transport in the HELCAT experiment at the University of New Mexico and to use the transport model to test feedback techniques to control the turbulence and turbulence driven transport.
  
  

  Cross Phase Dynamics in Plasma Turbulence
  

  
  

  Constituent Transport in Stratospheric Flows