Why a stellarator?
New non-neutral plasma physics
- Never been done
- Simple nucleation of toroidal electron cloud
- Rotational transform fundamentally alters poloidal damping
Opens up research opportunities impacting other areas of physics:
- Strongly rotating stellarator plasmas: Fusion science
- Confinement of antimatter
Drawbacks: Increased cost and complexity of the experiment
- Expert help necessary (NCSX team - N. Pomphrey and others)
- Recent advances in stellarator coil design and high precision CNC machining techniques make it ëeasier than everí