Plasma engineering and electromagnetics have played key fundamental roles in electrical engineering throughout the history of our discipline. Research here in recent years has centered on two general areas, electromagnetic fields and plasma media, and has been built around study of the interaction between energetic particle beams and plasmas and the application of finite element methods. Project areas include diagnostics for fusion plasmas, microwave heating of a variety of materials, antenna design, low-temperature plasma modification of materials, and magnetic levitation. Additional microwave projects are conducted in solid state research.

High-temperature plasma research is crucial to the development of a controlled thermonuclear fusion energy source. Rensselaer's Plasma Dynamics Lab has a very active research program on development of sophisticated particle beam diagnostic systems for making space and time resolved measurements on magnetically confined plasma experiments. Specific diagnostic techniques are developed and tested on relatively small-scale experiments in our on-campus laboratory, and then the techniques are scaled up for installation on major confinement experiments located off-campus. We are currently operating, for example, a large diagnostic system based on a 2 MeV particle accelerator as an integral part of the TEXT tokamak program at the University of Texas-Austin and collaborate with fusion diagnostics efforts at other U.S. and foreign institutions.

Electromagnetics and Plasma Diagnostics faculty