Studies of spherical tori, stellarators and anisotropic pressure with the M3D code

The Multi-level 3D (M3D) project simulates plasmas using multiple levels of physics, geometry and grid models in one code package. The M3D code has been extended to fundamentally non-axisymmetric and small aspect ratio, R/a >~1, configurations. Applications include the non-linear stability of the NSTX spherical torus and of the spherical pinch, as well as the relaxation of stellarator equilibria. The fluid level physics model has been extended to evolve the anisotropic pressures p j|| and p j⊥ for the ion and electron species and has been applied to magnetic island evolution.