Interactive scientific exploration of gyrofluid Tokamak turbulence

This research is a part of the Numerical Tokamak Project, a national consortium of efforts to create predictive numerical simulations of fluid plasma turbulence in tokamak fusion experiments using the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Major progress has been made in fusion research, as demonstrated by the recent production of 10 megawatts of fusion power in the Princeton Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR). However, much research is still needed before fusion can be a commercially successful electricity source. High-performance computing will play a profoundly important role in designing these machines. Realistic simulations are an important component of this research. The mission of this work is to use massively parallel computers to simulate the behavior of tokamak plasma and represent the results of the simulation for scientific visualization and diagnosis. These simulations have begun to produce results that are encouragingly close to present experiments. As this trend continues and as current models evolve, the simulations will provide an increasingly valuable tool for optimizing the design of future tokamaks, potentially reducing their cost and increasing the certainty of meeting their objectives.