MRI: Development of a Programmable Power Supply for the Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory (WiPPL)

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

This project will enable the construction of a highly flexible, modular power supply for the Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory (WiPPL), a basic plasma physics user facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The focus of WiPPL is the science of plasmas, the fourth state of matter. Comprised of two large plasma research devices, the Big Red Ball (BRB) and the Madison Symmetric Torus (MST), the vision for WiPPL is to experimentally advance the fundamental understanding of terrestrial, space, and astrophysical plasmas, thereby advancing a major physics frontier. The addition of the new power supply provides for substantially more flexible and sophisticated plasma experiments at WiPPL. Hence, the facility will be able to push even farther into the frontiers of plasma science, attracting users from the U.S. and abroad. A power supply of this design could also serve as an invaluable tool in other laboratories, given the supply's flexibility and modularity. The strong local enhancement of the research infrastructure afforded by this power supply is matched by the equally important enhancement to education of the UW-Madison's diverse community of undergraduate and graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows at WiPPL. This new power supply is digitally programmable and feedback controlled, and it has a wide array of both present and future applications for WiPPL, providing electrical current of varying magnitude and virtually arbitrary waveform. This current will drive electromagnets that help confine and control the BRB and MST plasmas, but the current will also be used to create, sustain, heat, and manipulate the plasmas themselves. Some experiments will be accomplished much more readily and quickly with this supply, but it also enables other experiments that would range from difficult to impossible without it. The research on WiPPL includes the plasma generation of magnetic fields, plasma-driven tearing of magnetic field lines, and charged particle acceleration. These processes and others occur in both terrestrial and non-terrestrial plasmas, and much of the research at WiPPL is inspired by astrophysical and space plasma phenomena. Hence, this research will help bridge the gap between plasma science in the laboratory and astrophysical and space plasma science. This new power supply will substantially enhance and broaden the basic plasma science research that can be carried out at WiPPL. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.