Plasma Transport Theory
As taught in: Fall 2003
To date, the most effective way to confine a plasma magnetically is to use a toroidal, or doughnut-shaped, device called a tokamak pictured in this schematic. (Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences.)
Instructors:
Prof. Kim Molvig
MIT Course Number:
22.616
Level:
Course Features
Course Description
This course describes the processes by which mass, momentum, and energy are transported in plasmas, with special reference to magnetic confinement fusion applications.
The Fokker-Planck collision operator and its limiting forms, as well as collisional relaxation and equilibrium, are considered in detail. Special applications include a Lorentz gas, Brownian motion, alpha particles, and runaway electrons.
The Braginskii formulation of classical collisional transport in general geometry based on the Fokker-Planck equation is presented.
Neoclassical transport in tokamaks, which is sensitive to the details of the magnetic geometry, is considered in the high (Pfirsch-Schluter), low (banana) and intermediate (plateau) regimes of collisionality.
*Some translations represent previous versions of courses.
