September 10, 2025
| In the effort to commercialize fusion energy, privately-funded TAE Technologies has produced steady-state, beam-sustained plasma configurations suitable for advanced reactors. These have the highest possible plasma pressure for a given applied magnetic field, opening the possibility for advanced fuel cycles. An essential feature of TAE’s reactor design is the edge/scrape-off-layer (SOL) plasma with large expansion and strong electrical biasing of the exhaust plasma. This project will model the SOL and exhaust plasma via a new algorithm (Darwin model) in the open- source Particle-In-Cell (PIC) code WarpX developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). This new algorithm will enable full-orbit, multi- physics models and exascale computing, which other Darwin simulation codes lack. The Darwin PIC model is optimal for addressing the physics of the exhaust plasma on hydrodynamic and transport time scales, including magnetic effects of plasma currents, large particle orbits, strong flow and rotation, sheaths, and many other physics features not yet captured in available community codes. The enhanced tool will be verified against theory and validated against existing experimental results. It will then be used to resolve important questions about the design of our next step fusion experiment, Copernicus. As WarpX is open-source, these extended modeling capabilities will be available to the larger domestic and international plasma physics communities (open and inclusive). The project is managed jointly by TAE and LBNL, with LBNL leading the code development and TAE providing a prototype Darwin implementation, and leading validation and physics application. In this public-private partnership, scientific contributions from the Department of Energy will directly accelerate progress toward the development of cost effective fusion energy in the private sector. |