Cooperative Agreement DEAR0000566

This $265,965 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) supports research and development by Nearstar Fusion Inc., a for-profit organization, on a new approach to fusion energy for grid-based electric power. The project aims to perform computational modeling, analytical calculations, and design work to de-risk and establish a point design for a "hypervelocity gradient field fusion" concept. This...

The National Science Foundation awarded Avalanche Energy Designs Inc. a $274,890 Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) Project Grant to characterize the fusion gain factor Q for their Orbitron micro-fusion reactor technology. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to use particle-in-cell code, experiments, and plasma loss mechanism analysis to optimize fusion gain factor modeling and enable mitigating solutions for future small-scale fusion reactor...

This National Science Foundation Project Grant award of $586,041 supports research at the University of Michigan from September 1, 2022 through August 31, 2025 under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049). The award will investigate the evolution of instabilities in plasma implosions driven by dynamic screw pinch compression. Researchers will evaluate competing theories computationally and experimentally regarding the roles of electrothermal instability, coronal plasma...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) provides $276,489 to Cornell University to support a research program studying the physics of turbulent plasmas in a laboratory setting. The award aims to develop new platforms for generating and measuring magnetized plasma turbulence, which has applications in astrophysics, fusion energy, and plasma physics. The research will utilize an imploding carbon wire-array...

This $850,000 National Science Foundation project grant supports research at the University of Colorado Boulder to advance understanding of particle acceleration in plasmas driven by lasers. Specifically, the three-year award will fund simulation and experimental studies of optical field ionization-generated plasma channels for particle acceleration using laser wakefield acceleration. Researchers will conduct accurate simulations of plasma channel formation, characterize generated...

Tibbar Plasma Technologies Inc. was awarded a $995,712 cooperative agreement from the National Science Foundation under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to support development of a plasma heat engine for efficient production of fusion energy. The two-year award running from December 2021 through November 2023 will allow Tibbar Plasma to advance its technology for an innovative fusion energy generator with the potential to provide clean, sustainable power. As part of its mission to promote...

This Project Grant award of $499,999 from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), under the CFDA program 81.135 - Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy, is to support Fuceltech Inc. DBA Princeton Innotech in the "Development of the Next Generation of Diode Pump Lasers for Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF)". The purpose of this award is to address the requirements for diode laser pumps needed for ICF, which is a critical component of the fusion energy research...

This $574,026 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program will establish a multi-institutional and international Collaborative Multi-Messenger Plasma Physics Center focused on studying fundamental plasma processes to model astrophysical signal sources. The Center includes four US nodes at Princeton University, Columbia University, University of Maryland, and Washington University in St. Louis that will collaborate internationally with Max...

This $600,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Physics supports research to develop a high-density, axially homogeneous helicon plasma source for the AWAKE (Advanced Proton Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Experiment) project at CERN. The research aims to qualify the helicon plasma generation technology for application in next-generation particle accelerator systems, which could significantly reduce the size and cost of future linear accelerators...

This $217,527 project grant from the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) establishes a multi-institutional and international collaborative center called the Multi-Messenger Plasma Physics Center. The Center will study fundamental plasma processes to model sources of astrophysical signals observed through multi-messenger astronomy. It will concentrate research in three areas: relativistic pair plasmas near compact objects, multi-scale modeling of...