Madison Symmetric
Madison Symmetric Torus
The Madison Symmetric Torus (MST) is a reversed field pinch (RFP) physics experiment with applications to both fusion energy research and astrophysical plasmas located at University of Wisconsin-Madison. RFPs are significantly different from tokamaks (the most popular magnetic confinement scheme) in that they tend to have a higher power density and better confinement characteristics for a given average magnetic field. RFPs also tend to be dominated by non-ideal phenomena and turbulent effects. MST is one of the sites in the Center for Magnetic Self Organization (CMSO).