Magnetic control of tokamak plasmas through deep reinforcement learning

🤖 Plain-English Summary

Abstract Nuclear fusion using magnetic confinement, in particular in the tokamak configuration, is a promising path towards sustainable energy. We also demonstrate sustained ‘droplets’ on TCV, in which two separate plasmas are maintained simultaneously within the vessel.

🔑 Key Findings

• A core challenge is to shape and maintain a high-temperature plasma within the tokamak vessel.
• This requires high-dimensional, high-frequency, closed-loop control using magnetic actuator coils, further complicated by the diverse requirements across a wide range of plasma configurations.
• In this work, we introduce a previously undescribed architecture for tokamak magnetic controller design that autonomously learns to command the full set of control coils.

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