amplitude

Both the frequency and the amplitude of the changes are increasing.

“You get waves trapped in the basin, and that just makes the shaking last longer. But you also get amplifications, so you’re feeling waves as higher amplitude, and therefore stronger shaking that, without the amplification, you wouldn’t have felt. So both are contributing to this duration,” Page said.

The performance loss is partly due to the difficulty of optimizing the shape and amplitude of the applied magnetic perturbations, which in turn stems from the computational intensity of existing physics-based optimization approaches.

The machine learning model, which is a more efficient surrogate for existing physics-based models, can monitor the plasma's status from one millisecond to the next and alter the amplitude and shape of the magnetic perturbations as needed.

Consequently, fusion researchers have had to preset the shape and amplitude of the magnetic perturbations ahead of each fusion run, losing the ability to make real-time adjustments.