Researchers Discover and Classify 10 Phases of Plasma

Thanks to Carl Wilson for posting this article from Phys.org reporting on research done at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Researchers have classified 10 unique phases and transitions in magnetized plasma which they hope can be useful in practical applications such as generating energy in nuclear fusion processes.

https://phys.org/news/2021-07-discovery-plasma-insights-fusion-science.html

Title: “Discovery of 10 phases of plasma leads to new insights in fusion and plasma science”

From the article:

For first author [Yichen] Fu, “The most important progress in the paper is looking at plasma based on its topological properties and identifying its topological phases. Based on these phases we identify the necessary and sufficient condition for the excitations of these localized waves. As for how this progress can be applied to facilitate fusion energy research, we have to find out.”

The research has been published in the journal Nature Communications, access to the full article is here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24189-3