The Pegasus Toroidal Experiment is a plasma confinement experiment relevant to

fusion power Fusion power is a proposed form of power generation that would generate electricity by using heat from nuclear fusion reactions. In a fusion process, two lighter atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus, while releasing energy. Devices de ...

production, run by the Department of Engineering Physics of the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

. It is a

spherical tokamak A spherical tokamak is a type of fusion power device based on the tokamak principle. It is notable for its very narrow profile, or '' aspect ratio''. A traditional tokamak has a toroidal confinement area that gives it an overall shape similar to ...

, a very low-aspect-ratio version of the

tokamak A tokamak (; russian: токамáк; otk, 𐱃𐰸𐰢𐰴, Toḳamaḳ) is a device which uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma in the shape of a torus. The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices being ...

configuration, i.e. the minor radius of the torus is comparable to the major radius.

Local Helicity Injection

Pegasus is used to study start up of spherical tokamaks using local helicity injection.''Advancing Local Helicity Injection for Non-Solenoidal Tokamak Startup'' Bongard 2018
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URANIA

Pegasus is being upgraded in 2019 (eg. by removal of the central solenoid) to build the Unified Reduced Non-Inductive Assessment (URANIA) experiment. This will study plasma startup using transient coaxial helicity injection (CHI). The max toroidal field is being increased from 0.15 T to 0.6 T, and the pulse duration from 25 to 100 ms.

References

Tokamaks University of Wisconsin–Madison {{plasma-stub