Versatile Toroidal Facility

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The Versatile Toroidal Facility (VTF) is a research group within the Physics Research Division of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The VTF is a laboratory focused on studying the phenomenon of magnetic reconnection. For this purpose the group has a small tokamak designed to observe rarified plasmas with probes. These probes measure electric and magnetic field behavior as well as various plasma characteristics in order to better understand the poorly understood processes involved in magnetic reconnection.

The VTF is a fundamental physics research group, and its research has wide-ranging and immediate impact on our understanding of such plasma-related subjects as solar flares, the aurora borealis, magnetic confinement fusion, and magnetohydrodynamic theory in general. The VTF is led by Dr. Miklos Porkolab and Dr. Jan Egedal, both MIT faculty.

[edit] External links

• PSFC homepage
• VTF homepage

Fusion power v • d • e
Atomic nucleus | Nuclear fusion | Nuclear power | Nuclear reactor | Timeline of nuclear fusion Plasma physics | Magnetohydrodynamics | Neutron flux | Fusion energy gain factor | Lawson criterion
Methods of fusing nuclei
Magnetic confinement: - Tokamak - Spheromak - Stellarator - Reversed field pinch - Field-Reversed Configuration - Levitated Dipole Inertial confinement: - Laser driven - Z-pinch - Bubble fusion (acoustic confinement) - Fusor (electrostatic confinement) Other forms of fusion: - Muon-catalyzed fusion - Pyroelectric fusion - Migma
List of fusion experiments
Magnetic confinement devices ITER (International) | JET (European) | JT-60 (Japan) | Large Helical Device (Japan) | KSTAR (Korea) | EAST (China) | T-15 (Russia) | DIII-D (USA) | Tore Supra (France) | ASDEX Upgrade (Germany) | TFTR (USA) | NSTX (USA) | NCSX (USA) | UCLA ET (USA) | Alcator C-Mod (USA) | LDX (USA) | H-1NF (Australia) | MAST (UK) | START (UK) | Wendelstein 7-X (Germany) | TCV (Switzerland) | DEMO (Commercial) Inertial confinement devices Laser driven: - NIF (USA) | OMEGA laser (USA) | Nova laser (USA) | Novette laser (USA) | Nike laser (USA) | Shiva laser (USA) | Argus laser (USA) | Cyclops laser (USA) | Janus laser (USA) | Long path laser (USA) | 4 pi laser (USA) | LMJ (France) | Luli2000 (France) | GEKKO XII (Japan) | ISKRA lasers (Russia) | Vulcan laser (UK) | Asterix IV laser (Czech Republic) | HiPER laser (European) Non-laser driven: - Z machine (USA) | PACER (USA) See also: International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility