Summary of submissions from the 2021 & 2022 Sherwood Fusion Theory Conferences

What is it about?

The Sherwood Fusion Theory conference is a meeting held annually which highlights advances in theoretical and computational research related to plasma physics and magnetic confinement fusion energy. This articles summarizes papers submitted after the 2021 and 2022 conferences and provides some general remarks on the role of theory and computation in advancing fusion energy. Magnetic confinement fusion research is focused on optimizing the confinement of extremely hot plasma (~100 million Kelvins) inside a "magnetic bottle". The confinement can be degraded both by small scale turbulence that causes heat to leak out slowly, or by large scale instabilities that disrupt confinement or deposit too much heat on the wall at one time for the material surfaces to handle. Several of the papers in the collection deal with minimizing the small scale turbulent transport, while some address the large scale instabilities. The use of computational methods to design better optimized magnetic configurations for future experiments or reactors is also described, as are developments in computational techniques for fusion simulations, including prospects for the use of quantum computing.

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Why is it important?

This summary points to a variety of recent advances in a range of topics of interest to magnetic fusion energy research and highlights the important role played by theory and computation.