arXiv subjects

Lanke Fu

Publications and source records attributed to Lanke Fu.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Variational Framework for Guiding-Center Kinetics, Anisotropic Equilibria, and Quasisymmetry in Stellarators

We present a variational framework in which (i) guiding-center kinetic theory, (ii) macroscopic force balance with gyrotropic/anisotropic pressure, and (iii) quasisymmetry (QS) constraints appear as different facets of a single structure. Starting from a guiding-center Vlasov--Maxwell action, constrained variations yield the guiding-center kinetic equation and Maxwell equations. Without phenomenological closure, momentum conservation yields macroscopic force balance $\mathbf{J} \times \mathbf{B}/c = \nabla\cdot\boldsymbol{\Pi}$, where $\mathbf{J}$ is the current density, $\mathbf{B}$ is the magnetic field, and $\boldsymbol{\Pi}$ is the gyrotropic stress tensor. We connect QS to an integrability condition expressed in coordinate-free form via $$f_T \equiv \nabla\psi \cdot \bigl(\nabla B \times \nabla(\mathbf{B} \cdot \nabla B)\bigr) = 0,$$ where $\psi$ is the flux surface label, and show how this condition leads to solvability constraints on anisotropy closely related to those found in a recent constrained Kruskal--Kulsrud variational formulation.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2026

Towards joint optimization of stellarator coils and support structures

The support structure is an integral part of the design of nuclear fusion reactors, especially 3D stellarator devices. A practical reactor's coils and support structures must have three competing qualities: an accurate magnetic field for good confinement, sufficient rigidity to protect the brittle high-temperature superconductor (HTS) from damage, and a simple geometry for low-cost construction. In existing devices, the coil geometry is often optimized without knowledge of the support structures' design and the coils' true stress and deformation. The support structures are then placed by hand through repeated finite element analyses (FEA) until engineering requirements are met. This makes the structural design of stellarator coil systems lengthy and labor-intensive. Using new developments in differentiable structural mechanics, we present coil-fem, an open-source software tool that integrates support differentiable FEA into the stellarator coil optimization loop. It enables the integrated optimization of coil geometry and support clamp locations to simultaneously reduce magnetic field errors and stresses in the coil body. We also present the first combined coil-support optimization in the stellarator literature. Using a penalty term based on coil-fem, we produced a coil set with 2.4x lower RMS von Mises stress and similar field error compared to an unoptimized baseline.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2025

A flexible and differentiable coil proxy for stellarator equilibrium optimization

Balancing plasma performance and coil cost is a significant challenge when designing a stellarator power plant. Most current stellarator designs are produced through two-stage optimization: stage-1 for the equilibrium and stage-2 for a coil design that reproduces its magnetic configuration. Because few proxies connect both stages, two-stage optimization can produce plasmas that have high-quality physical properties but overly complex coils. In recent years, single-stage optimization has increasingly been used to optimize the plasma and coils simultaneously in order to improve the plasma-coil balance. However, all existing single-stage tools are specialized for filament coils, cannot model coil systems containing permanent magnets (PM) or dipole arrays, and continue to be challenged by numerical problems. The quasi-single-stage (QSS) optimization finds a middle-ground by integrating a coil optimization subproblem into stage-1 optimization. We present a flexible, differentiable coil complexity proxy based on the newly developed QUADCOIL coil optimization code. QUADCOIL is fast and can target realistic coil metrics and constraints that are unavailable to codes with comparable speed. We demonstrate the effectiveness and flexibility of the QUADCOIL proxy by presenting two QSS optimization studies. The first study produces a permanent magnet solution for the MUSE stellarator with 29% fewer magnets than previous solutions. The second study produces a coil solution for the ARIES-CS stellarator with 27% reductions in both peak and root-mean-square force.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2025

Numerical asymptotics of near-axis expansions of quasisymmetric magnetohydrostatic equilibria with anisotropic pressure

Quasisymmetry (QS) is a property of special magnetic configurations, where the magnetic field strength, but not necessarily the full vector field, has a direction of symmetry. QS leads to reduced neoclassical transport and thus can be a desirable property in stellarator design. The Garren-Boozer (GB) conundrum has been interpreted to mean that globally quasisymmetric magnetohydrostatic (MHS) equilibria, other than axisymmetric solutions, with isotropic pressure do not exist. When expanded as power series of an effective minor radius, the governing equations become overdetermined at the 3rd order. Despite this, recent optimization efforts have found numerical isotropic-pressure equilibria with nearly exact global QS. To reconcile these two perspectives, Rodriguez and Bhattacharjee (RB) showed that by introducing pressure anisotropy into the problem, one can overcome the GB conundrum. This formally enables the study of equilibria with exact, global QS. Building on RB's work, we present pyAQSC, the first code for solving the near-axis expansion (NAE) of anisotropic-pressure quasisymmetric equilibria to any order. As a demonstration, we present a 6th order, QA near-axis equilibrium with anisotropic pressure, and a convergence analysis. PyAQSC opens the door to the study of higher-order properties of equilibria with exact global QS. Like existing isotropic-pressure NAE codes, PyAQSC can accelerate stellarator optimization as an initial state tool. However, by optimizing for low pressure anisotropy in a space that allows anisotropy, pyAQSC may discover practical QS stellarator designs previously hard to access. We give results comparing the RB method with DESC equilibria with anisotropic pressure.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2024

Designing a Validation Experiment for Radio Frequency Condensation

Theoretical studies have suggested that nonlinear effects can lead to "radio frequency condensation", which coalesces RF power deposition and driven current near the center of a magnetic island. It is predicted that an initially broad current profile can coalesce in islands when they reach sufficient width, providing automatic stabilization. Experimental validation of the theory has thus far been lacking. This paper proposes experiments on DIII-D for testing and refining the theory of the nonlinear effects.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2024

Global Stellarator Coil Optimization with Quadratic Constraints and Objectives

Most present stellarator designs are produced by costly two-stage optimization: the first for an optimized equilibrium, and the second for a coil design reproducing its magnetic configuration. Few proxies for coil complexity and forces exist at the equilibrium stage. Rapid initial state finding for both stages is a topic of active research. Most present convex coil optimization codes use the least square winding surface method by Merkel (NESCOIL), with recent improvement in conditioning, regularization , sparsity and physics objectives. While elegant, the method is limited to modeling the norms of linear functions in coil current. We present QUADCOIL, a fast, global coil optimization method that targets combinations of linear and quadratic functions of the current. It can directly constrain and/or minimize a wide range of physics objectives unavailable in NESCOIL and REGCOIL, including the Lorentz force, magnetic energy, curvature, field-current alignment, and the maximum density of a dipole array. QUADCOIL requires no initial guess and runs nearly $10^2\times$ faster than filament optimization. Integrating it in the equilibrium optimization stage can potentially exclude equilibria with difficult-to-design coils, without significantly increasing the computation time per iteration. QUADCOIL finds the exact, global minimum in a large parameter space when possible, and otherwise finds a well-performing approximate global minimum. It supports most regularization techniques developed for NESCOIL and REGCOIL. We demonstrate QUADCOIL's effectiveness in coil topology control, minimizing non-convex penalties, and predicting filament coil complexity with three numerical examples.

physics.plasm-ph↗