Measures of quasisymmetry for stellarators

Abstract

Quasisymmetric stellarators are an attractive class of optimised magnetic confinement configurations. The property of quasisymmetry (QS) is in practice limited to be approximate, and thus the construction requires measures that quantify the deviation from the exact property. In this paper we study three measure candidates used in the literature, placing the focus on their origin and the comparison of their forms. The analysis shows clearly the lack of universality in these measures. As these metrics do not directly correspond to any physical property (except when exactly QS), optimisation should employ additional physical metrics for guidance. Especially close to QS minima, treating QS metrics through inequality constraints so that additional physics metrics dominate optimisation is suggested. The impact of different quasisymmetric measures on optimisation is presented through an example.

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• The DESC Stellarator Code Suite Part III: Quasi-symmetry optimization
• Phases and phase-transitions in quasisymmetric configuration space
• Constructing the space of quasisymmetric stellarators
• Adjoint methods for quasisymmetry of vacuum fields on a surface
• Optimization of quasisymmetric stellarators with self-consistent bootstrap current and energetic particle confinement