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

该项目将为威斯康星等离子体物理实验室（WiPPL）建造一个高度灵活的模块化电源，WiPPL是威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的一个基本等离子体物理用户设施。WiPPL的重点是等离子体科学，物质的第四种状态。WiPPL由两个大型等离子体研究设备组成，大红球（BRB）和麦迪逊对称环面（MST）， WiPPL的愿景是通过实验推进对陆地，空间和天体物理等离子体的基本理解，从而推进一个主要的物理前沿。新电源的增加为WiPPL提供了更加灵活和复杂的等离子体实验。因此，该设施将能够进一步推动等离子体科学的前沿，吸引来自美国和国外的用户。考虑到电源的灵活性和模块化，这种设计的电源也可以作为其他实验室的宝贵工具。该电力供应所提供的研究基础设施的强大本地增强与威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校本科生和研究生以及WiPPL博士后的多元化社区的教育同样重要的增强相匹配。这种新型电源是数字可编程和反馈控制的，它具有广泛的当前和未来的WiPPL应用，提供不同幅度和几乎任意波形的电流。该电流将驱动有助于限制和控制BRB和MST等离子体的电磁铁，但该电流也将用于产生、维持、加热和操纵等离子体本身。有了这种供应，一些实验将更容易、更迅速地完成，但它也使其他实验成为可能，如果没有它，这些实验将很难甚至不可能完成。WiPPL的研究包括等离子体产生磁场、等离子体驱动磁力线撕裂和带电粒子加速。这些过程和其他过程都发生在陆地和非陆地等离子体中，WiPPL的许多研究都受到天体物理学和空间等离子体现象的启发。因此，这项研究将有助于弥合实验室等离子体科学与天体物理和空间等离子体科学之间的差距。这种新的电源将大大加强和扩大可以在WiPPL进行的基础等离子体科学研究。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.