Precise stellarator quasi-symmetry can be achieved with electromagnetic coils.

Magnetic fields with quasi-symmetry are known to provide good confinement of charged particles and plasmas, but the extent to which quasi-symmetry can be achieved in practice has remained an open question. Recent work [M. Landreman and E. Paul, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 035001, 2022] reports the discovery of toroidal magnetic fields that are quasi-symmetric to orders-of-magnitude higher precision than previously known fields. We show that these fields can be accurately produced using electromagnetic coils of only moderate engineering complexity, that is, coils that have low curvature and that are sufficiently separated from each other. Our results demonstrate that these new quasi-symmetric fields are relevant for applications requiring the confinement of energetic charged particles for long time scales, such as nuclear fusion. The coils' length plays an important role for how well the quasi-symmetric fields can be approximated. For the longest coil set considered and a mean field strength of 1 T, the departure from quasi-symmetry is of the order of Earth's magnetic field. Additionally, we find that magnetic surfaces extend far outside the plasma boundary used by Landreman and Paul, providing confinement far from the core. Simulations confirm that the magnetic fields generated by the new coils confine particles with high kinetic energy substantially longer than previously known coil configurations. In particular, when scaled to a reactor, the best found configuration loses only 0.04% of energetic particles born at midradius when following guiding center trajectories for 200 ms.

Nanolubrication by ionic liquids: molecular dynamics simulations reveal an anomalous effective rheology.

This article describes molecular dynamics simulations of an ionic liquid (IL) confined between iron oxide surfaces under relatively high pressure and severe shearing, representative of a typical steel-steel lubricated contact. The simulations reveal the presence of hydrodynamic and thermal slip at the walls, despite the wetting nature of the fluid/wall interface. A crucial consequence of the temperature slip is the subsequent increase of the fluid temperature under shear, which modifies its effective rheology, resulting in saturation of the shear stress at high shear rates. Overall, this article provides a methodology for accurate modeling of tribological contacts lubricated by a nanometer-thick IL film. The results contribute to the debate on the saturation of the shear stress at high shear rates, and reveal the rich phenomenology arising in severe tribological conditions, departing from the traditional understanding of nanofluidic transport, mainly built in the linear response regime and standard thermodynamic conditions.