Pedro F Gil, Weiping Li, Julianne Stratton, Alan A Kaptanoglu, Eve V Stenson
A long-standing issue for fusion reactors based on 3D magnetic confinement (stellarators) has been finding suitable coils. Traditional optimization methods struggle to balance multiple physics and engineering constraints, requiring significant computing resources and input tuning, yet still resulting in suboptimal or infeasible configurations. We present a new optimization method based on an augmented Lagrangian scheme and show that it efficiently generates stellarator coils that exhibit enhanced physics performance and meet essential design requirements. This will accelerate progress toward commercially viable stellarator fusion reactors.