The Magnetic Fusion Energy Formulary

The Magnetic Fusion Energy Formulary (the "Formulary" hereafter) is a reference book containing much of the critical mathematics and physics required for students and researchers in the field of magnetic fusion energy. It compiles over 500 equations drawn from the leading scientific literature into a comprehensive and convenient book. Each equation includes a citation that provides the original source and page number to provide further reading, and all equations are comprehensively indexed for easy on-the-fly access.

The formulary consists of three sections. Chapters 1-2 cover the mathematics, fundamental units, and physical constants relevent to magnetic fusion. Chapters 3-9 covers the basic physics of thermonuclear fusion plasmas, beginning with electrodynamics as a foundation and developing single particle physics, plasma parameters, plasma models, plasma transport, plasma waves, and nuclear physics. Finally, Chapters 10-13 covers the physics of toroidally confined core and edge plasmas, as well as the fundamentals of magnetic fusion energy in deuterium-tritium tokamaks. Chapter 13 contains a large table of parameters for major tokamaks of the world.

Contributing and Licensing

We have decided to release the Formulary source code on GitHub as a sort of experiment, where we will attempt to maintain an open-source reference book for the plasma physics and magnetic fusion community to which you can contribute your expertise. If you feel that essential, standard, and widely-used fusion science is missing from the Formulary, please make us aware, or better yet, write a few snippets (or a whole section!) of LaTeX code with your additions, providing the most respected reference(s) and page number(s) for the new information. Your name will be added to the front section of contributors. If this model proves successful, we may even remove ourselves as the authors and transition to a community authored and maintained work. Let us know if you're interested in pursuing this path with us.

We encourage any interested user to fork (on GitHub) or clone the repository, make corrections to existing content and add important content that you feel is missing, and then submit a pull request so that we can incorporate your work into the Formulary. (Of course, contributions are always welcome by email.) As such, the LaTeX source code and build system that comprises the Formulary has been released as open source software under the GNU General Public License (GPL v3.0). In addition to contributing to the Formulary, we encourage you to download, redistribute, modify, and use the source code in any way you might find useful in your own projects under the terms outlined in the licenses above.

Build instructions

On Linux, clone into the repository and then use the provided GNU Makefile to build PDF and Postscript:

  # Clone the MFE Formulary from GitHub:
  git clone https://github.com/MFEFormulary/MFEFormulary.git  

  # Move to the LaTeX source code directory:
  cd MFEFormulary/latex
  
  # To build a publication-ready PDF and PS:
  make  

  # To install the PDF and PS in the top-level directory
  make install

  # To cleanup all build files:  
  make clean  

Dependencies

1. LaTeX - The MFE Formulary is built with the LaTeX typesetting system. Unix/Linux users usually use TexLive, which is available from the standard package managers (YUM on Fedora/Redhat-based distributions, apt-get on Debian-based distributions). Windows users will usually use MiKTeX. The following LaTex packages, which can be obtained at CTAN) if not included by default on your system, are required:

• amsbsy, amsmath, amssymb, caption, enumerate, fix-cm, float, graphicx, graphics, hyperref
  longtable, makeidx, multicol, multirow, natbib, rotating, tocloft, tools, xcolor

2. GNU make - The MFE Formulary build system is controlled using GNU make. The makefile provides automatic compilation of the final PostScript and PDF from the raw LaTeX source in a user-friendly way.

Directory structure

The Formulary directory structure and build system are pretty straightforward and easy to understand:

• archive/ : Previous versions of the Formulary in PDF format

• ipython/ : IPython notebooks for useful computation and figure generation

• latex/ : LaTeX code for the Formulary. Contains all *.tex files and GNU makefile
  -- figures/ : EPS format figures contained in the Formulary
  -- build/ : location of transient LaTeX build files

• CHANGELOG.md : List of major content updates and fixes for each Formulary release

• LICENSE.md : GNU GPL v3.0 covers the Formulary source code

• README.md : You're currently reading it