Keynote: Modeling RF Heating of Hydrogen Plasmas for Nuclear Fusion

In nuclear fusion, the tokamak is the leading candidate for becoming a hydrogen fusion reactor, where the operating temperature is of the order of ~100 million K. The hydrogen then becomes a fully ionized plasma that is confined by the tokamak via the application of strong magnetic fields. One of the systems used for reaching these high temperatures is based on RF heating.

In this keynote talk from COMSOL Day: Nuclear Fusion, Björn Zaar of KTH Royal Institute of Technology discusses tokamaks and the challenges around modeling RF wave propagation and damping in tokamak plasmas. Then, he shares how they overcame the challenges using the COMSOL Multiphysics^® software and LiveLink™ for MATLAB^®.

Björn Zaar is a PhD student of theoretical fusion plasma physics in the Division for Fusion Plasma Physics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. He obtained his BSc in engineering physics and MSc in electrophysics from the same university.