A neoclassically optimized compact stellarator with four planar coils

Abstract

A neoclassically optimized compact stellarator with simple coils has been designed. The magnetic field of the new stellarator is generated by only four planar coils including two interlocking coils of elliptical shape and two circular poloidal field coils. The interlocking coil topology is the same as that of the Columbia Non-neutral Torus (CNT) [Pedersen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 205002 (2002)]. The new configuration was obtained by minimizing the effective helical ripple directly via the shape of the two interlocking coils. The optimized compact stellarator has very low effective ripple in the plasma core, implying excellent neoclassical confinement. This is confirmed by the results of the drift-kinetic code SFINCS [Landreman et al., Phys. Plasmas 21, 042503 (2014)], showing that the particle diffusion coefficient of the new configuration is one order of magnitude lower than CNT's.