Loss Particle Trajectories in Quasi-Axisymmetric Stellarators

Stellarators are a class of plasma device designed to achieve nuclear fusion using magnetic confinement. The magnetic field must confine high energy alpha particles, a byproduct of a Deuterium-Tritium fusion reaction. Work involved the simulation of alpha particle confinement in Beams3d for multiple quasi-axisymmetric stellarator fields to analyze particle loss trajectories. MATLAB algorithms were developed to isolate and classify particle trajectories to examine disparities in performance between fields optimized for quasi-symmetry. Fields with multiple flux surfaces optimized for quasi-symmetry had the lowest particle loss fractions. Future work must focus on the development of improved objective functions for particle confinement.