Please use the links below to explore the on and off-campus facilities utilized by Columbia researchers.
Research Facilities
High-Beta Tokamak - Extended Pulse (HBT-EP)
The on-campus, student-run tokamak at Columbia University, exploring the control of magneto-hydrodynamic instabilities in plasmas.
Columbia Stellarator eXperiment (CSX)
The Columbia Stellarator eXperiment (CSX) is a small stellarator at the Columbia Plasma Physics Laboratory (Columbia University) designed to explore optimized magnetic geometries using superconducting magnets.
Collisionless Terella Experiment (CTX)
A small on-campus experiment designed to understand the basic principles of collisionless transport of energetic plasma in planetary magnetospheres and to identify mechanisms causing charged particle energization and flux modulations
Columbia University Tokamak for Education (CUTE)
A small low-aspect ratio tokamak being commissioned to explore plasma control and pulse design in an education-focused program.
Fusion Technology
Columbia on-campus work is exploring novel technologies to advance fusion energy sciences. A first project is the investigation of cryogenic matter (`pellet') injection into high energy plasmas and particle beams.
DIII-D National Fusion Facility
DIII-D, the largest magnetic fusion user facility in the U.S., is a tokamak confinement device with significant engineering flexibility to explore the optimization of the advanced tokamak approach to fusion energy production.
National Spherical Torus Experiment Upgrade (NSTX-U)
The NSTX-U is a magnetic confinement fusion facility employing a spherical torus confinement configuration to explore the potential stability and confinement advantages of this compact tokamak concept.
SPARC
SPARC® is a compact, high-field tokamak that Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is building to demonstrate net fusion energy (more energy from fusion reactions than is used to heat the plasma).
International Tokamaks
Fusion energy research is a highly international activity, offering opportunities to conduct research overseas.
Research Projects
Breeding Blanket
A commercially viable deuterium-tritium fusion device needs a blanket to shield against neutrons and produce tritium. Columbia’s research in this area is focused on extracting tritium from the blanket and modeling how conducting blanket concepts interact with plasma dynamics.
Disruption Mitigation Research
Design against off-normal events is an essential part of fusion energy research. The rapid quench of the tokamak plasma (called a 'disruption') releases a burst of energy into the reactor vessel that must be controlled. Research involves designing systems and techniques to manage this energy release in a benign manner.
Disruption Prediction in Tokamaks
Understanding the chain of events that leads to abrupt plasma terminations is a focus of Columbia tokamak research.
Equilibrium and Stability of Spherical Tokamaks
Spherical tokamaks are compact high-pressure fusion devices. Understanding their states of equilibrium and how stable they are is key for future energy production.
Fusion Pulse Design
Columbia scientists combine the most promising elements of tokamak research to produce stable and powerful plasmas.
Fusion Systems Design
Columbia students and staff participate in fusion design studies where they develop innovative concepts for fusion devices that satisfy physics, engineering and economic constraints.
Open FUSION Toolkit (OFT)
The Open FUSION Toolkit is an open-source suite of modeling tools for engineering, analysis and education, developed and maintained at Columbia.
Suppressing MHD Instabilities and Avoiding Off-Normal Events
The goal of Columbia’s work in the fields of suppressing magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities and Avoiding Off-Normal Events (AONEs) is to provide reliable avoidance or mitigation of both core tearing modes (TMs) and edge localized modes (ELMs) to inform the design of a commercially viable fusion pilot plant (FPP). This research is organized and managed under three main thrusts, detailed below. A cross cutting effort informing all of these activities is the development of MHD stability and perturbed equilibrium modeling tools.
Theory of Stellarator Configurations
By utilizing more complex magnet geometries, a high temperature plasma can be confined without any internal currents.
Tokamak Edge Stability
Like the surface of the sun, the edge of tokamak plasmas are susceptible to bursty instabilities that must be controlled to interface the hot plasma to a material wall.
Verification, Validation and Uncertainty Quantification
The project aims to accelerate commercial fusion energy development by ensuring predictive models are robust, transparent, and experimentally validated—minimizing risk and building stakeholder confidence in fusion reactor design and operation.