desc-opt 0.10.4

Computes, analyzes and optimizes 3D MHD equilibria for stellarators and tokamaks

Stellarator Optimization Package

DESC solves for and optimizes 3D MHD equilibria using pseudo-spectral numerical methods and automatic differentiation.

The theoretical approach and implementation details used by DESC are presented in these papers [1] [2] [3] [4] and documented at Theory. Please cite our work if you use DESC!

[1]

Dudt, D. & Kolemen, E. (2020). DESC: A Stellarator Equilibrium Solver. [Physics of Plasmas] [pdf]

[2]

Panici, D. et al (2023). The DESC Stellarator Code Suite Part I: Quick and accurate equilibria computations. [JPP] [pdf]

[3]

Conlin, R. et al. (2023). The DESC Stellarator Code Suite Part II: Perturbation and continuation methods. [JPP] [pdf]

[4]

Dudt, D. et al. (2023). The DESC Stellarator Code Suite Part III: Quasi-symmetry optimization. [JPP] [pdf]

Quick Start

The easiest way to install DESC is from pypi: pip install desc-opt

For more detailed instructions on installing DESC and its dependencies, see Installation. The code is run using the syntax desc <path/to/inputfile> and the full list of command line options are given in Command Line Interface. (Note that you may have to prepend the command with python -m)

DESC can be ran in two ways:

The first is through an input file specifying the equilibrium and solver options, this way can also can also accept VMEC input files.

The second is through a python script, where the equilibrium and solver options are specified programmatically, this method offers much more flexibility over what types of equilibrium solution, optimization and analysis can be performed. See the tutorial Script Interface for more detailed information.

Refer to Inputs for documentation on how to format the input file. The equilibrium solution is output in a HDF5 binary file, whose format is detailed in Outputs.

As an example usage of the input file method, to use DESC to solve for the equilibrium of the high-beta, D-shaped plasma described with the DSHAPE input file, the command from the DESC directory is desc -p desc/examples/DSHAPE, where the -p flag tells DESC to plot the results once it finishes.

An example of the script usage to solve and optimize an equilibrium, refer to the python script desc/examples/precise_QA.py, which can be run from the DESC directory from the command line with python3 desc/examples/precise_QA.py

Repository Contents

• desc contains the source code including the main script and supplemental files. Refer to the API documentation for details on all of the available functions and classes.

• docs contains the documentation files.

• examples contains example input files along with corresponding DESC solutions, which are also accessible using the desc.examples.get function.

• tests contains routines for automatic testing.

Contribute

• Contributing guidelines

• Issue Tracker

• Source Code

• Documentation