When IDL released version 6.3 they included a function called BUTTERWORTH. This function generates the Butterworth filter function commonly used in frequency filtering of time series data. I have previously used a Butterworth filter by generating my own array. Since it is almost always simpler to use provided functions, I decided to use this new…
While serving as the newsletter editor for the U.S. Burning Plasma Organization, I implemented an Image of the Month feature intended to highlight exciting projects within the research community. Some of these described specific projects, such as the education and outreach work, while others were just curious graphics that don’t really highlight anything. An example from…
The lengthy diary that follows was originally written in 2007. Diary of a Graduate Thesis Experiment The laboratory in which I am performing my thesis work (LAPD at UCLA) is used by researchers from all over the world. Groups that are using the device for a research project receive an allotted time in which to…
Here it is, the first thing I have ever won! The frame around the bird, that is, and all I had to do was fill out a survey. The bird is displayed by my EO1 from Electric Objects. The EO1 is fundamentally a display screen, not unlike a digital photo frame, but the company adds in a…
The 58th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Plasma Physics (APS-DPP) is underway and I made it into my first press release! The conference sets up a Virtual Pressroom to distribute press releases about some of the really cool results that will be presented during the conference. For example, you can read…
Exciting news came from the area of nuclear fusion energy this past week as the team from the Alcator C-Mod tokamak announced their new world record for plasma pressure. Before getting to that, please note that you can interact with the C-Mod Team during their Ask Me Anything session hosted by Reddit on Thursday, October…
General Atomics (GA) just completed its 25th year of participation in undergraduate summer research according to a press release from General Atomics that was picked up by Engineering.com. The specific programs have changed over the years, with the present program being the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) that sees undergraduates spend ten summer weeks working on research…
The paper posted below resulted from just under three years of work at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility. The big result is that we were able to engineer a big change to the 20+ MW neutral beam system such that the beams can change their voltage during plasma shots. Lots of tokamaks use neutral beams…
Summary Haiku Tokamak goes down Flagship facility, too Feelings hurt out West Magnetic fusion has grabbed quite a few headlines in the past week as news about the failure of the NSTX-U tokamak spreads through the media. One thing that caught my eye is that multiple stories, all written by different authors, all describe the NSTX-U as…
I serve as a mentor in the undergraduate research program at DIII-D and one of my students from 2015 was shown as a highlight by the Department of Energy (DOE)! The highlight is from a DOE presentation dated February 19, 2016, but I only recently found it. The presentation is an overview of the multiple…
I recently participated in the European Physical Society’s 43rd Conference on Plasma Physics where I gave an oral presentation concerning ion cyclotron emission in tokamaks. Besides having the cool abbreviation of ICE, ion cyclotron emission is interesting because it might be something that can be measured in ITER to provide an indication of the confinement of energetic ions.…
This is an engineering paper concerning the design of an antenna that was installed in the DIII-D tokamak. There are particle beams on DIII-D that provide up to 20 MW of heating power for the plasma. In this paper, we simulated a few scenarios in which an appreciable fraction of this beam power hits the…
David C. Pace Research Scientist at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility General Atomics San Diego, California, USA Education Honors and Awards Professional Activities Research Experience Teaching Experience Publications and Presentations Co-author Publications Education University of California, Los Angeles, USA Ph.D., Experimental Plasma Physics, 2009 M.Sc., Physics 2003 Committee Co-chairs: G.J. Morales…
The following work is a technical diagnostic paper concerning a method for calculating the uncertainty in a probe that measures energetic ion losses in the DIII-D tokamak. The fast ion loss detector (FILD) measures the pitch angle and the energy of these ions that hit it at the outer wall. That measurement is incredibly valuable…
This is a technical paper concerning the design and commissioning of a gamma ray camera on the DIII-D tokamak. The diagnostic, the Gamma Ray Imager (GRI), is a pinhole camera constructed of lead. This diagnostic is being used to study the behavior of relativistic electron beams in magnetically confined fusion plasmas. Gamma rays can be…
