Reversed field pinchA reversed-field pinch (RFP) is a device used to produce and contain near-thermonuclear plasmas. It is a toroidal pinch which uses a unique magnetic field configuration as a scheme to magnetically confine a plasma, primarily to study magnetic confinement fusion. Its magnetic geometry is somewhat different from that of the more common tokamak. As one moves out radially, the portion of the magnetic field pointing toroidally reverses its direction, giving rise to the term reversed field.
Neutral-beam injectionNeutral-beam injection (NBI) is one method used to heat plasma inside a fusion device consisting in a beam of high-energy neutral particles that can enter the magnetic confinement field. When these neutral particles are ionized by collision with the plasma particles, they are kept in the plasma by the confining magnetic field and can transfer most of their energy by further collisions with the plasma. By tangential injection in the torus, neutral beams also provide momentum to the plasma and current drive, one essential feature for long pulses of burning plasmas.
Inertial confinement fusionInertial confinement fusion (ICF) is a fusion energy process that initiates nuclear fusion reactions by compressing and heating targets filled with fuel. The targets are small pellets, typically containing deuterium (2H) and tritium (3H). Energy is deposited in the target's outer layer, which explodes outward. This produces a reaction force in the form of shock waves that travel through the target. The waves compress and heat it. Sufficiently powerful shock waves generate fusion.
Fourier analysisIn mathematics, Fourier analysis (ˈfʊrieɪ,_-iər) is the study of the way general functions may be represented or approximated by sums of simpler trigonometric functions. Fourier analysis grew from the study of Fourier series, and is named after Joseph Fourier, who showed that representing a function as a sum of trigonometric functions greatly simplifies the study of heat transfer. The subject of Fourier analysis encompasses a vast spectrum of mathematics.
Boundary layerIn physics and fluid mechanics, a boundary layer is the thin layer of fluid in the immediate vicinity of a bounding surface formed by the fluid flowing along the surface. The fluid's interaction with the wall induces a no-slip boundary condition (zero velocity at the wall). The flow velocity then monotonically increases above the surface until it returns to the bulk flow velocity. The thin layer consisting of fluid whose velocity has not yet returned to the bulk flow velocity is called the velocity boundary layer.
Color confinementIn quantum chromodynamics (QCD), color confinement, often simply called confinement, is the phenomenon that color-charged particles (such as quarks and gluons) cannot be isolated, and therefore cannot be directly observed in normal conditions below the Hagedorn temperature of approximately 2 terakelvin (corresponding to energies of approximately 130–140 MeV per particle). Quarks and gluons must clump together to form hadrons. The two main types of hadron are the mesons (one quark, one antiquark) and the baryons (three quarks).
Nonstandard analysisThe history of calculus is fraught with philosophical debates about the meaning and logical validity of fluxions or infinitesimal numbers. The standard way to resolve these debates is to define the operations of calculus using epsilon–delta procedures rather than infinitesimals. Nonstandard analysis instead reformulates the calculus using a logically rigorous notion of infinitesimal numbers. Nonstandard analysis originated in the early 1960s by the mathematician Abraham Robinson.
Non-uniform discrete Fourier transformIn applied mathematics, the nonuniform discrete Fourier transform (NUDFT or NDFT) of a signal is a type of Fourier transform, related to a discrete Fourier transform or discrete-time Fourier transform, but in which the input signal is not sampled at equally spaced points or frequencies (or both). It is a generalization of the shifted DFT. It has important applications in signal processing, magnetic resonance imaging, and the numerical solution of partial differential equations.
Speech recognitionSpeech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech recognition or speech to text (STT). It incorporates knowledge and research in the computer science, linguistics and computer engineering fields. The reverse process is speech synthesis.
Feature (machine learning)In machine learning and pattern recognition, a feature is an individual measurable property or characteristic of a phenomenon. Choosing informative, discriminating and independent features is a crucial element of effective algorithms in pattern recognition, classification and regression. Features are usually numeric, but structural features such as strings and graphs are used in syntactic pattern recognition. The concept of "feature" is related to that of explanatory variable used in statistical techniques such as linear regression.