A software package to manipulate space dependencies and geometry in magnetic confinement fusion

Abstract

Improvement in the performance of magnetic confinement devices for nuclear fusion relies on the optimization of the geometry of the plasma: either the two-dimensional (2D) cross-section shape in tokamaks with toroidal symmetry or the 3D magnetic configuration in stellerators. The variation in time and space of the plasma parameters in these devices is measured using tomographic or imaging systems with a large number of detectors. To integrate the geometrical manipulations required for the analysis of experimental data, the description of the confining magnetic field configuration and the modeling and simulation of the physical processes within the plasma, an object oriented software package has been developed. Classes in this package are used to describe several coordinate systems, including magnetic flux coordinates, the geometry of the measurement systems, the configuration of the magnetic field and space, and time dependent functions representing plasma parameters. Methods applied on these classes can then easily implement coordinate system transformations, as well as interpolation of and integro-differential calculus on, space and time dependent functions. The geometrical description and characteristics of the magnetic flux surfaces have a natural representation in this environment, allowing the ready computation of the intersection of measurement viewing lines with a coordinate mesh and with flux surfaces, as well as the calculation of the corresponding transfer matrix used in tomographic inversion. The selected numerical methods used in these manipulations and their performances are also presented.