ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,620,498, issued on May 5, was assigned to THE TRUSTEES OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY (Princeton, N.J.).
"Planar coil stellarator" was invented by David Gates (Princeton, N.J.), Caoxiang Zhu (Hefei, China) and Kenneth Hammond (Plainsboro, N.J.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Disclosed herein is a stellarator comprising two sets of coils, namely a set of encircling coils which encircle the plasma axis, and a set of shaping coils which do not encircle any other coil or the plasma. In some embodiments, the encircling coils include a structural element to maintain their shape under magnetic forces. In some embodiments, the shaping coils are mounted on...