Quasi-axially symmetric stellarators.

Confinement of a plasma for controlled thermonuclear fusion is studied numerically. Toroidal equilibria are considered, with an emphasis on the Modular Helias-like Heliac 2 (MHH2), which is a stellarator of low aspect ratio with just two field periods surrounded by 16 modular coils. The geometry is fully three-dimensional, but there is an axial symmetry of the magnetic structure that is calculated to give confinement competitive with that in circular tokamaks. Additional vertical and toroidal field coils, together with a current drive, provide the flexibility and the control of rotational transform necessary for a successful experiment. An MHH3 device with three field periods and comparable quasi-axial symmetry is presented, too, and because of reversed shear, its physical properties may be better. Variational analysis of equilibrium and stability is shown to give a more reliable prediction of performance for these stellarators than linearized or local theories that suffer from a failure of differentiability and convergence.