1960
historical context timeline event
1960

Christofilos Astron experiment at LLNL

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Plain English Summary

A physicist named Nicholas Christofilos built an early machine at Livermore that tried to trap plasma inside a self-generated magnetic 'smoke ring.' It didn't reach fusion, but it proved the geometry that Los Alamos would later perfect.

Description
The Astron experiment established the field-reversed configuration geometry that prefigured modern FRC research.

Primary Sources

Primary Source Document
Christofilos Astron Fusion 2011
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Source Verification (1)
  • 01

    "This report details the design and construction of the Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration 2 (PFRC-2) device, aimed at producing stable, quasi-steady-state, high-beta plasmas at kilovolt temperatures. Key innovations include the use of a machinable polycarbonate vacuum vessel, internal high-tempe"

    Construction of the PFRC-2 Device (2011)
External Sources (4)
patent
US Patent 9,947,420 B2 — Magnetic field plasma confinement for compact fusion power
conference 2019
Recent Achievements in the C-2W Field-Reversed Configuration Experiment — APS DPP19
TAE Technologies
paper 2019-06-05
Formation of hot, stable, long-lived field-reversed configuration plasmas on the C-2W device — Nuclear Fusion
H. Gota et al.
paper 2024-12-20
Producing entangled photon pairs and quantum squeezed states in plasmas — Physical Review E
Kenan Qu, Nathaniel J. Fisch

Related Dossiers (3)

EXPERIMENT General
Astron (Christofilos Fusion Experiment)
Astron was a 1960s magnetic-confinement fusion concept proposed by Nicholas Christofilos at Lawrence Livermore National
WEAPONS Weapons Lab
LLNL
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, US weapons lab collaborating with CEA/DAM under stockpile stewardship agreement
CONCEPT Concept
Field-Reversed Configuration
FRC plasma configuration. A compact toroid with near-unity plasma beta (β ≈ 1). The physics basis for TAE's C-2W, nT-Tao

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