The Plasma Science and Innovation Center (PSI-Center)

Summary form only given. The plasma science and innovation center (PSI-center) has recently formed and received funding. A principal goal of the PSI-center is the refinement of overlapping computational tools with sufficient physics, boundary conditions, and geometry to be calibrated with experiments, so that we can achieve significantly improved predictive capabilities. This will be accomplished through the development of an improved computational capability for ICC experiments, with a concentration on EC experiments. Thus a special emphasis will be placed on physics effects that may extend beyond the standard analysis applied to the mainline programs. The PSI-center will initially concentrate on five focus areas that have been identified as being very important for various EC experiments. The key physics issues that have been identified are: 1) two fluid/Hall physics, 2) kinetic and FLR effects, 3) reconnection and relaxation physics, 4) transport, atomic physics and radiation, and 5) boundary conditions and geometry. All of these effects are also important in mainline fusion devices, but one or more tend to dominate in particular EC configurations. There are numerical simulation codes having some subset of these important features, but no existing code covers all of the special needs of innovative/emerging concepts. We plan to develop the needed features within existing codes to avoid the resource requirements and delays associated with developing completely new models. We will start with two codes: 1) NIMROD which is a 3D code that is pseudo-spectral (and thus periodic) in one dimension and employs finite elements in the other two dimensions; and 2) MH4D which employs a full 3D unstructured mesh. While the entire EC community is invited to participate in this center, nine experimental programs will provide the initial database and test bed for the theoretical and computational efforts of the PSI-center. These nine experiments are: 1) Caltech reconnection experiments, 2) FRX-L, 3) HIT-SI, 4) MBX, 5) PHD, 6) SSPX, 7) SSX, 8) TCS, and 9) ZAP. This set of experiments has many overlapping areas of physics that complement the PSI-center's focus