Professor James Meiss at the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado, Boulder encourages applications for a two-year PostDoctoral Research Associate. The PRA will work as part of an international collaboration funded by the Simons Foundation to study “Hidden Symmetries and Fusion Energy” for the design and optimization of stellarator plasma confinement devices.

• The project is to explore the optimal design of toroidal magnetic confinement devices for plasma that have (nearly) integrable guiding-center dynamics (to maximize the confinement) and no externally driven current (to minimize associated instabilities and the need for current drive); such devices are called stellarators. The latter condition requires significant deviation from axisymmetry, which would otherwise be the straightforward way of achieving the former and is the principle of the tokamak. Integrability is guaranteed, however, under a condition called quasisymmetry, and confinement under a more general symmetry called omnigenity. 
• The goal is to develop criteria to maximize the degree of integrability of the field line and guiding center motion that will then be used in optimization codes being developed by collaborators at other institutions. 
• The postdoc will be expected to help develop these ideas and the computer codes to test them, as well as write and contribute to the writing of manuscripts submitted for publication.