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Plasma physics

Thermonuclear ringtones

The ability to confine alpha particles within a burning deuterium–tritium plasma is likely to be crucial to the future of fusion power generation. Resonant interactions between alpha particles and magnetohydrodynamic vibrations could threaten their confinement.

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Figure 1: Frequency spectrum of Alfvén-wave eigenmodes in the DIII-D tokamak experiment versus time.

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Cowley, S. Thermonuclear ringtones. Nature Phys 2, 299–300 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys308

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