Interactive Scientific Exploration of Gyrofluid Tokamak Turbulence

Abstract

This research is a part of the Numerical Tokamak Project, a national consortium of efforts to create predictive nu merical simulations of fluid plasma turbulence in tokamak fusion experiments using the most powerful supercomput ers in the world. Major progress has been made in fusion research, as demonstrated by the recent production of 10 megawatts of fusion power in the Princeton Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR). However, much research is still needed before fusion can be a commercially success ful electricity source. High-performance computing will play a profoundly important role in designing these ma chines. Realistic simulations are an important component of this research. The mission of this work is to use mas sively parallel computers to simulate the behavior of tokamak plasma and represent the results of the simula tion for scientific visualization and diagnosis. These simu lations have begun to produce results that are encourag ingly close to present experiments. As this trend continues and as current models evolve, the simulations will provide an increasingly valuable tool for optimizing the design of future tokamaks, potentially reducing their cost and in creasing the certainty of meeting their objectives.