IGNITE Tokamak World Model Architecture

Abstract

We introduce IGNITE, a generative world foundation model for fusion plasma behavior simulation trained in a self-supervised manner from over a decade of unlabeled experimental data at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility. The core of IGNITE is a dynamics model that can simulate DIII-D discharges from a given set of actuator trajectories. These trajectories can be supplied or generated on-the-fly from a textual prompt or from desired experimental outcomes. The model architecture consists of several spatio-temporal tokenizers that embed the different input modalities, including time-series like spatio-temporal measurement data, image sequences, and high-resolution spectrograms, each of which collected at vastly different time scales. The backbone is composed of an auto-regressive dynamics model that has the capacity to predict entire DIII-D discharges given initial latent plasma states and actuator trajectories over a theoretical infinite horizon. IGNITE paves the way towards efficient AI-driven experimental planning and world modeling for nuclear fusion.