What is a stellarator?
A stellarator is a type of magnetic confinement device used to confine hot plasma. The ultimate goal of magnetic confinement is to confine high temperature plasmas at sufficiently high densities and long enough confinement times so as to be applicable to fusion power production. Stellarators are a particlular type of “magnetic bottle” which use 3-dimensional shaping to try and improve the plasmas confinement and stability properties. A picture of one type of stellarator is shown below. The blue-magneta surface represents the outer surface of the plasma; the colors represent the strength of the magnetic field on this surface (magenta = high field, light blue = low field). The white lines are the magnetic field vector which wraps around the plasma surface. This property of the magnetic field to traverse or wrap around the plasma surface, rather than simply go around as a set of individual disconnected lines is known as rotational transform and is helpful in confining the plasma. In the s
