TAE Technologies, Inc, is a private company focused on the development of carbon-free baseload electricity production using fusion plasmas confined in a field-reversed configuration (FRC), which the Office of Fusion Energy Science identified as a leading candidate for advanced fusion energy. TAE’s national lab scale experimental device, C landmark empirical Two record pressures using neutral beam injection (NBI) to sustain the configuration. results have emerged from TAE’s experiments: (1) neutral beam current expands stable operational boundaries of FRCs, and (2) energy confinement increases with increasing electron temperature. The goal of this project is to build understanding of how these positive trends extend to fusion relevant conditions which is crucial for the success of FRC-based fusion reactors. 

Building on a previous ALCC award where stable operating conditions for beam driven FRCs were identified, this project will use ALCC computing resources to identify desirable, globally stable, self - consistent, kinetic FRC states relevant to 2W. - C These states will then be used in turbulent transport studies to understand energy confinement and predict how it scales to fusion relevant conditions. The particle - in - cell code, WarpX, which was developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) will be used for these simulations. In collaboration with LBNL, TAE added a hybrid PIC - algorithm to WarpX for the study of magnetically confined , plasmas enabling efficient simulations of . stability - macro Recently TAE also added a semi-implicit electrostatic solver which enables large scale electrostatic micro- silico demonstration that favorable turbulence simulations. In electron energy confinement scaling with temperature continues to reactor conditions will reduce technical risk of TAE’s fusion approach and greatly aid in securing continued funding for TAE’s ultimate goal of building a viable fusion power plant. 

This project will accelerate the development and commercialization of new carbon-free electricity technologies. The project leverages public investments by three major components of the Office of Science: the code was developed for the Accelerator R&D and Production (ARDAP) program, optimized for new computer architectures by the Exascale Computing Project (ECP), and enhanced with new physics models to so that it can address magnetic fusion plasmas within scope of the Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program.