News Releases

To expand the potential use of diamond in semiconductor and quantum technologies, researchers are developing improved processes for growing the material at lower temperatures that won’t damage the silicon in computer chips. These advances include insights into creating protective hydrogen layers on quantum diamonds without damaging crucial properties like nitrogen-vacancy centers.

PPPL researchers have made a significant advancement in understanding the underlying heating mechanism of the sun’s atmosphere, finding that reflected plasma waves could drive the heating of coronal holes.

New artificial intelligence models for plasma heating can do more than was previously thought possible, not only increasing the prediction speed 10 million times while preserving accuracy but also correctly predicting plasma heating in cases where the original numerical code failed.

New experimental results suggest that sprinkling boron into a tokamak could shield the wall of the fusion vessel and prevent atoms from the wall from getting into the plasma. A new computer modeling framework shows the boron powder may only need to be sprinkled from one location. The experimental results and computer modeling framework will be presented this week at the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics in Atlanta.

As part of the global effort to harness power from fusing plasma, PPPL and the University of Seville’s Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Lab worked on the computer codes, engineering and physics for a new and unique fusion reactor: the SMall Aspect Ratio Tokamak.

A new paper in Nature Machine Intelligence notes that journal articles reporting how well machine learning models solve certain kinds of equations are often overly optimistic. The researchers suggest two rules for reporting results and systemic changes to encourage clarity and accuracy in reporting.

Nominees for the award must be members of the ACS’s physical chemistry division. The winner receives the award at the meeting, gives a research presentation, and receives an honorarium. Carter is just the second person to receive this newly established award.

Greg Hammett and Bill Dorland have been awarded the 2024 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics for their pioneering work on turbulence in plasma, a key challenge in the quest for fusion energy. Their decades of research have transformed the understanding of plasma behavior and contributed to advances in both fusion and astrophysical sciences.