IFS Seminar with Swadesh Mahajan

Abstract: Optimized Transport barriers are the essence of high confinement and hence the potent pathway to commercially viable fusion. Even in this era of IT and powerful simulations, optimization of transport barriers requires deep theoretical understanding of these high gradient states that seem to do opposite of what would be expected – they reduced transport leading to better energy confinement. A macroscopic thermodynamic (ThTB) model of a plasma boundary layer, in which heat flux F enters from one end while the other end is kept at a fixed temperature T__O. By invoking the principle of Maximum Entropy Production (MEP), we derive the conditions under which the temperature difference T_₁ - T__O can be maximized. The thermodynamic predictions are subjected to a rigorous examination via what we have called MTB-a combination of detailed numerical simulations and extensive experimental data. The analysis guides us to identify the control knobs that must be operated to create fusion relevant state of high temperature contrast.

Swadesh M. Mahajan

Research Professor, Physics Dept. University of Texas

Distinguished Professor, SNU University, India

Director, Plasma Physics at ASICTP, Trieste, Italy

Elected fellow of the American Physical Society (1987) 

Elected fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences (1991)

Director of the International College on Plasma Physics, ASICTP, Trieste, Italy (1989-)

Consultant International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna

Three hundred fifty (many with over 100 citations) papers in reputed scientific journals- Equally large number of invited talks

Paper selected as one of the hundred most influential papers collected in the Hundred Year Commemorative Volume (1995) of The Physical Review and Physical Review Letters.

Discoverer, Co-discoverer of many phenomena in theoretical plasma physics- Author of Magnetofluid unification. Extensive frontier work in “Confinement” the hallmark of the magnetically confined plasmas. Co-inventor of the X and the SuperX divertor, and a compact fusion-fission hybrid system (see for instance, Nature | Vol. 460 | 2 July 2009). Granted United States Patent- US 8, 279,994 Patent Pending on two major recent inventions advancing fusion

Co-founder, Chief scientific advisor ExoFusion, a boutique fusion company