"You son of a bitch!" editionPrevious thread:>What is /ppg/?A thread for discussing plasma physics topics:>General plasma-related questions>Recent papers and developments>Fusion plasmas>Astrophysical plasmas>Low temperature and atmospheric plasmas>Complex/dusty plasmas>Plasma generation and processing>Plasma instrumentation and diagnostics>etc.Contributing papers, discussing research interests, and general effort-posting is encouraged. Suggestions for resources to add to the list are also welcome./ppg/ is getting revived because for those who don't know, this coming week in Chicago is a huge joint conference between the APS Division of Plasma Physics (DPP) - which specializes predominantly in high temperature plasma, fusion, and space and plasma science - and the Gaseous Electronics Conference (GEC) - which specializes in low-temperature plasmas, plasma processing, semiconductor manufacturing, instrumentation, and diagnostics./sci/entists attending the conference are encouraged to discuss interesting talks, presentations, and posters they see or sit in on, share copies or screenshots of interesting material from the hybrid presentations. I'll be posting news and material throughout the week.
Useful Resources (WIP):General Plasma Physics>Chen, F. Introduction to Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion>10.1007/978-1-4757-5595-4>Piel, A. Plasma Physics: An Introduction to Laboratory, Space, and Fusion Plasmas>10.1007/978-3-642-10491-6>Gurnett, D. Introduction to Plasma Physics: With Space and Laboratory Applications>10.1017/9781139226059>Conrads, H. & Schmidt, M. Plasma generation and plasma sources>10.1088/0963-0252/9/4/301>Braithwaite, N. Introduction to Gas Discharges>10.1088/0963-0252/9/4/307Fusion>Freidberg, J. Ideal magnetohydrodynamic theory of magnetic fusion systems>10.1103/RevModPhys.54.801>Freidberg, J. Ideal MHD>10.1017/CBO9780511795046Space Plasmas>Baumjohann, W.B. & Treumann, R.A. Basic Space Plasma Physics>doi.org/10.1142/12771>Treumann, R.A. & Baumjohann, W.B. Advanced Space Plasma Physics>10.1142/p020>Tsurutani, B., et al. Space Plasma Physics: A Review>10.1109/TPS.2022.3208906Low Temp., Atmospheric, and Complex Plasmas>Lichtenberg, A. & Lieberman, M.. Principles of Plasma Discharges and Material Processing>10.1002/0471724254>Kong, MG., et al. Plasma medicine: An Introductory Review>10.1088/1367-2630/11/11/115012>Misra, N.N., Schlüter, O., & Cullen, P.J. Cold Plasma in Food and Agriculture>10.1016/C2014-0-00009-3>Merlino, R. Dusty plasmas: from Saturn’s rings to semiconductor processing devices>10.1080/23746149.2021.1873859>Shukla, P. & Mamun, A. Introduction to Dusty Plasma Physics>10.1088/0741-3335/44/3/701Computational Plasma Physics:>Tajima, T. Computational Plasma Physics>10.1201/9780429501470>Jardin, S. Computational Methods in Plasma Physics>10.1201/ebk1439810958Instrumentation and Diagnostics:>Hutchinson, I.H. Principles of Plasma Diagnostics>10.1017/CBO9780511613630>Merlino, R. Understanding Langmuir probe current-voltage characteristics>10.1119/1.2772282>Hershkowitz, N. & Kim, Y.C. Probing plasmas with ion acoustic waves>10.1088/0963-0252/18/1/014018
NRL Plasma Formulary (2023 edition)>https://www.nrl.navy.mil/Portals/38/PDF%20Files/NRL_Plasma_Formulary_2023.pdfAn extremely useful reference guide for plasma equations, principles, and engineering practices.YouTube Channels and Other Media (WIP):>ITER - Channel for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project>https://www.youtube.com/@iterorganization>Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory - Videos and research presentations relating to PPPL projects>https://www.youtube.com/@PPPLab>Institute of Plasma Physics - Some terrific plasma videos from the Czech Academy of Sciences>https://www.youtube.com/@instituteofplasmaphysicsip769>Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics - Discussions and videos of research, including several on the W7-X stellarator>https://www.youtube.com/@plasmaphysik>University of Sydney - A series of interesting plasma physics lectures>https://www.youtube.com/@usyd-seniorplasmaphysicsle6653>MIT OpenCourseWare - A series of lectures covering plasma diagnostics (probes, spectroscopy, etc.)>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAf2m_sLWq4>Plasma Channel - Some neat DIY plasma stuff>https://www.youtube.com/@PlasmaChannel
All of the plasma conference venues this year have been so lame compared to PPPS 2025.
>>17084569Witchcraft!
What are plasma 4chan’s odds on ITER turning an energy profit? And the DEMO program actually working? And on what timeline (the DEMO people have a pretty well-defined timeline that I think you can find on Wikipedia)? I, personally a physicist outside the field, am skeptical and I still support building standard (fission) nuclear reactors since the “fusion is right around the corner!” folks have derailed clean energy for too long
all of this just to boil waterjust concede and make the nuclear plants already jeez
>>17084680Fifty fifty - it either does or it doesn’t.
The sku the sky the sky... do we have to be plasma to thread it! And what kind.Anyway, I need my site back ASAP.
Plasma, when sheet be crossing and what not affecting eachother frequency force temp whatnot creating a distortion inbtw aka plasma!I side my finger accross the tv screen, the grid that dances within makes an aura as it interacts with the external environment snd even my own plasma ajra field and layers aka overlays. I want to draw in the canvesae of this here interface of reality with plasma by moving the sand in the sandbox to make dragons of light. I want to breathe life into them by making loops they can self contain in, vessels to host their function snd being.
>>17084563Chicago’s okay. Fucking expensive though. Kind of wish they’d do more of these conferences in smaller cities.
Snagged a couple random posters to share:A flashy summary of upgrades at DIIID.
Some details from W7X's '24-'25 campaign
And a poster on magnetic reconnection that looked neat.Will take requests on topics if people are interested in seeing more (fusion, space plasmas, dusty plasmas, waves, instrumentation, etc.)
>>17084961>>17084962>>17084963henlo fren, I would appreciate more replies on my questions here: >>17084680you seem knowledgeable so what are your thoughts on ITER/DEMO?
>>17084680low.
>>17084680I'm pretty confident ITER will cross breakeven and then some, but I'm concerned about DEMO's practicality as a sustainable model for commercial reactors. Even if the projected costs are a fraction of what it's likely to be, it'll still be substantially more expensive than a fission plant.Fusion has definitely made substantial progress over the last decade, but fission is still a good investment in the near/mid-term.
>>17084961>>17084962>>17084963Post some low temp stuff or instrumentation please.
>>17085342Sure thing.Here's one comparing background plasma diagnostics using Langmuir probes vs spectroscopy and contrasting the results against different models.
Interactions between cold atmospheric plasma jets and plastics.
Neat one looking at the idea of plasma-activated fog for plasma agriculture applications.
>>17084685Nothing worth doing is easy.
>>17085457>plasma fogSomething something manmade horrors beyond your comprehension.
>>17084569Niggas be seeing this and still be claiming aether isn't real lol
Question for plasma/vacuum anons - suppose someone were looking to make an inexpensive but safe setup for experimenting with basic plasma generation, plasma cleaning, deposition, etc. Is there a route one can take towards doing that safely or do the prices of vacuum hardware and safe supplies, etc. make that just totally out of reach?I know there's like microwave oven transformers, neon sign supplies, chem lab surplus glass, etc. and other shit that you can MacGyver into basic plasma demos like on YouTube, but that shit always looks jank and dangerous as fuck.
>>17087326It depends on your definition of inexpensive.It's definitely possible to get old equipment that's either never been used or in good condition on EBay, but actually judging whether something is plausibly working or just a scam is hard unless you know what to look for. https://www.surplussales.com/ has a lot of useful old components in known condition at reasonable prices, especially RF stuff. Universities and government agencies usually have some surplus property disposition service that practically gives away equipment for free.It's definitely possible to make safe versions of most things yourself, but there's not really a good way to learn how except dismantling enough commercial ones when they break to reverse engineer them.
>>17087326Short answer: "Yes" with an "If." Long answer: "No" with a "But."Yes, you can make an 'inexpensive' and safe setup for experimenting with these kinds of basic plasma processing operations (at least some of them, generation and cleaning are fine, and deposition via sputtering is probably feasible, but shit like vapor deposition requires very precise control over your working gasses). You don't need a $10,000 vacuum chamber for basic demonstrations, a KF-40 cross and some flanges, feedthroughs, and a viewport would do for the basics, and the viewport can be made cheaply if you've got some half-inch acrylic and access to a mill (yes, there'll be outgassing from the acrylic, but you're not going to be doing anything sensitive to it with this setup and it's small enough that it won't affect your pump-down drastically). Gas/vacuum setup is easy enough to work with - get some cheap KF-40 flanges off Amazon with either NPT ends or threads and get a little needle valve to connect to a tank so you can leak in tiny amounts of an inert gas, and connect the other flange to a cheap vacuum pump - Harbor Freight/Lowes/Menards/other hardware stores generally keep a couple of cheap rotary vane pumps in stock now for HVAC/refrigeration shit. Get a small cannister of inert gas from a welding supplier or even some fucking off-the-shelf balloon helium for a working gas.The electrical stuff is your biggest hurdle - yes, like you said, you can repurpose shit like MOTs - but DON'T because it's crazy dangerous; the CFL circuit has its own hazards. >>17087491 's suggestion of a surplus power supply is probably your best bet. Look through surplus sales of nearby universities, or try places like BMI surplus or GovDeals, or eBay - just go in understanding that a lot of these things are on surplus for a reason, and that you may not find what you're looking for right away.
>>17088875Now, all this said - is this kind of setup going to be sufficient for demonstrating plasma processing in detail? No, probably not. But it's a good platform for demonstrating other things - if you get a vacuum gauge you can demonstrate how pump-down time varies with initial conditions and effective rate, you can put high-outgassing materials into the flange to show how it affects your pump down, you can demonstrate Paschen's Law if you've got meters to measure breakdown voltage, you can look at the effects of changing your working gas. You could very easily demonstrate plasma cleaning using some little glass microscope slides, and if you can get a wire into the chamber through a feedthrough you could even do some very rudimentary Langmuir probe analysis if you can get a secondary power supply for a bias voltage.
>>17084680In reply to "we are half a century or more away from building a fusion power plant:"You are entirely right to be skeptical, especially given that the running joke in physics has been that "fusion is always 20 years away—and always will be". However, the landscape has shiftedMajor breakthroughs in nuclear fusion have shifted the field from theoretical physics to practical and scientific milestones:• Fusion Ignition (Net Energy Gain): On December 5, 2022, scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved fusion ignition for the first time in a laboratory using inertial confinement (delivering 2.05 MJ of laser energy and producing 3.88 MJ of fusion energy). They have since repeated and increased this yield, reaching up to 8.6 MJ in April 2025.• High Energy Records at JET: The Joint European Torus (JET) in the UK achieved record-breaking deuterium-tritium fusion energy output and sustained high-performance plasma reactions reaching over 150 million degrees Celsius.• Plasma Duration Records:• France’s WEST tokamak reactor set a long-duration plasma record, maintaining an ultrahot hydrogen plasma for 1,337 seconds (over 22 minutes) in February 2025.• China’s EAST ("artificial sun") and Germany’s Wendelstein 7-X stellarator have continuously pushed boundaries in plasma density, confinement time, and the "triple product" (density, temperature, and confinement time).• High-Temperature Superconducting (HTS) Magnets: Private and public projects (such as SPARC and various spherical tokamaks) are leveraging advanced HTS magnet technology to build much more compact, powerful, and cost-effective magnetic confinement reactors
>>17089114For decades, fusion was strictly the domain of massive, slow-moving government projects like ITER, whose bureaucratic delays push its demonstration timelines out toward 2050. Today, a wave of private capital and new technology has fundamentally changed the pace:• Super-powerful magnets: Companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems have built high-temperature superconducting magnets capable of creating massive magnetic fields with far less mass. This allows reactors to be built smaller, cheaper, and faster than traditional government designs.• The Net-Energy Milestone is Behind Us: We have already crossed the physics hurdle. Laboratories like the National Ignition Facility (NIF) have repeatedly achieved "ignition" (net energy gain), including a record-shattering 8.6 megajoule yield in 2025.• Aggressive Timelines: Dozens of private startups are targeting pilot plants by the mid-to-late 2030s.The ConsensusIf you mean a widespread, grid-dominating commercial fusion industry, your half-century timeline is highly realistic; experts don't expect deep grid penetration until the 2070s. However, if you mean a singular, working prototype powerplant delivering power to a localized grid, we are very likely to see it by the late 2030s or 2040s.
>>17089115Added to renewable energy:The drop in solar PV and battery storage costs has effectively won the economic argument against building new fossil fuel infrastructure.• The Challenge shifted from Generation to Transmission: The major bottleneck is no longer building cheap solar panel arrays or wind farms. The crisis lies in grid infrastructure and curtailment—meaning old power grids cannot handle or distribute the vast amounts of intermittent clean energy being produced.• The Bridge Strategy: Paired with a massive drop in battery energy storage systems (BESS), renewables act as the immediate bridge over the next 20 to 30 years while other technologies mature.The Endgame: The Fusion BlueprintRecent breakthroughs, such as those at the National Ignition Facility achieving higher net energy gain and private companies securing massive funding rounds, have turned fusion from an elusive physics problem into an engineering sprint.• AI-Accelerated Engineering: Tech giants are heavily investing in fusion because the explosion of data centers requires non-stop, dense energy that standard renewables struggle to guarantee overnight without massive overbuilding. AI is simultaneously being used to model plasma physics to prevent reactor shutdowns.• The Sequencing: We don't have to choose between them. We build renewables rapidly today to stabilize carbon emissions, while treating fusion as the generational upgrade that will eventually power humanity's long-term future.
>>17089116Nuclear fusion is practically and effectively unlimited in terms of its fuel supply, which can last for billions of years, though the power produced from it will not be literally infinite or free• High Infrastructure Costs: Building, operating, and eventually decommissioning complex fusion reactors requires massive capital investments. the electricity itself will still involve running costs• Material Wear and Tear: Intense neutron radiation bombards the interior walls of a reactor, wearing down materials and requiring periodic maintenance or replacement.• Physical Limits: While fuel supplies like deuterium are vast, they are technically finite on Earth, and managing power output on a global grid will still be bound by engineering and economic limits.
>>17089114>>17089115>>17089116>>17089118Thanks, ChatGPT.
>>17089323AI slopsters must die
>>17089517>The NRL plasma physics division was abolished and had its people and equipment scattered to the wind last monthSource? I know some institutions (especially smaller colleges) *associated* with NRL are downsizing or shuttering, but this is the first I've heard anyone claiming the whole division is shutting down.
I'm thinking about going to grad school for plasma physics - which is going to be more interesting and employable in the long run? The high temperature fusiony stuff, the low temperature processing stuff, or the super cool space stuff?
>>17090065It's impossible to say what's most employable long term. Just know that most places that say they're doing fusion are really doing something that's only tangentially related (this is also true of all of the fusion companies that aren't literal scams), so it's worth looking into what a group is actually doing to see if you're interested before applying. There's a ton of interesting things to do with low temperature plasmas, and you'll usually have more flexibility in what you'll be working on since most low temperature groups are less heavily specialized and the skills/equipment are more transferrable between different sub-areas. I don't really deal with the EP or heliophysics space people, just the ones who say they're doing "laboratory astrophysics" but it's actually nuclear weapons stuff, so I don't know much about their employment situation right now. There are also a million other subfields that you won't even know exist before starting grad school.
