日期:2022/09/09   IAE 

諾曼·羅斯托克（Norman Rostoker，1925 年 8 月 16 日 - 2014 年 12 月 25 日）是加拿大等離子體物理學家，以開發基於清潔等離子體的聚變能而聞名。 他於 1998 年與人共同創立了 TAE Technologies（前身為 Tri Alpha Energy），並擁有 27 項關於基於等離子體的聚變加速器的美國專利。

Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker 方法是一種固態物理學理論，以他的名字命名。

羅斯托克就讀於多倫多大學，並於 1947 年獲得物理學碩士學位，並於 1950 年在卡內基理工學院獲得博士學位，並於 1948 年在那裡進行研究。1953 年至 1956 年，他在 Armor Research 1956 年至 1967 年在聖地亞哥通用原子公司成立，並於 1965 年擔任聚變和等離子體物理項目經理。 1962 年至 1965 年，他還是加利福尼亞大學聖地亞哥分校的教授。1967 年，他擔任康奈爾大學的 IBM 工程教授，1967 年至 1970 年擔任該大學應用物理系主任。在那裡，他是一名 脈衝電子和離子束實驗室的創始人之一。 從 1973 年起，他擔任加州大學歐文分校的物理學教授，並於 1973 年至 1976 年擔任該校物理系主任。自 2007 年起，他擔任該校的名譽教授。  

諾曼·羅斯托克（Norman Rostoker）於 1925 年 8 月 16 日出生於加拿大安大略省多倫多市，並獲得了學士學位。分別於 1946 年和 1947 年獲得多倫多大學的碩士學位。 1950 年，他獲得了理學博士學位。 1948-1953 年他在卡內基理工學院擔任研究物理學家，之後於 1953-56 年在裝甲研究基金會擔任理論物理學主管。 1956-67 年間，他擔任通用原子公司的研究人員和聚變和等離子體物理項目經理，以及加州大學聖地亞哥分校的物理學教授。隨後，他擔任 IBM 工程教授和康奈爾大學應用物理系主任。從 1972 年至今，Rostoker 博士一直是加州大學歐文分校物理系的教授和主席（1973-1976）。他於 1972 年擔任 APS 等離子體物理部主席，並於 1988-89 年被授予 UCI 傑出教師講師。 1988 年，Rostoker 博士獲得了 APS 的 James Clerk Maxwell 獎。

科學貢獻
最初，Rostoker 研究炸藥和聚能裝藥、能帶理論和核反應堆，但在 1958 年左右轉向等離子體物理學。他的研究包括高強度離子束的物理學、非線性等離子體特性、 和高密度夾點等離子體限制裝置。 

Rostoker 使用粒子加速器技術和磁化目標聚變概念尋求民用核聚變的替代概念。 1998 年，他在洛杉磯地區 建立了當時的三阿爾法能源公司，該公司正在開展碰撞束聚變反應堆項目。 質子束和硼束被轉換成等離子體狀態，由圓柱形等離子體本身中的粒子流產生的磁場保持在一起，這也稱為場反轉配置 (FRC)。然後，兩個這樣的等離子體高速碰撞並形成長達 3 m 和 40 cm 寬的雪茄形結構。在聚變等離子體中使用硼和質子不會像託卡馬克那樣產生高能中子。根據 Rostoker 的說法，然後將中性粒子以高速切向方式註入等離子體雲上，等離子體雲沿著等離子體邊緣的軌道運行，並通過逸出粒子來防止等離子體冷卻。 

2015 年，Tri Alpha 宣佈在 5 毫秒內成功維護 FRC 等離子體。 

獎項
1962 年，羅斯托克被選為美國物理學會會士 ，隨後於 1988 年獲得詹姆斯·克拉克·麥克斯韋等離子體物理學獎。 

Rostoker 還獲得了加州大學歐文分校頒發的 UCI 獎章，併入選俄羅斯科學院。 

 

Norman Rostoker (August 16, 1925 – December 25, 2014) was a Canadian plasma physicist known for being a pioneer in developing clean plasma-based fusion energy. He co-founded TAE Technologies (formerly known as Tri Alpha Energy) in 1998 and held 27 U.S. Patents on plasma-based fusion accelerators.

The Korringa–Kohn–Rostoker method, a theory in solid-state physics, is named after him.

Rostoker studied at the University of Toronto, where he received his master's degree in physics in 1947, and received his doctorate in 1950 at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he did research from 1948. From 1953 to 1956, he was at the Armor Research Foundation and from 1956 to 1967 at General Atomics in San Diego, from 1965 as manager for fusion and plasma physics projects. He was also a professor at the University of California, San Diego from 1962 to 1965. From 1967, he was an IBM Professor of Engineering at Cornell University, where he headed the Faculty of Applied Physics from 1967 to 1970. There, he was one of the founders of the laboratory for pulsed electron and ion beams. From 1973, he was professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine, where he headed the faculty of physics from 1973 to 1976. He was Professor Emeritus there since 2007.

Scientific contributions
Initially, Rostoker dealt with explosives and shaped charges, band theory and nuclear reactors, but turned to plasma physics around 1958. His research included the physics of high intensity ion beams,[4] nonlinear plasma properties,[5] and high density pinch plasma confinement devices.[6]

Rostoker pursued alternative concepts for civil nuclear fusion using particle accelerator technologies and the concepts of magnetized target fusion. In 1998, he was instrumental in founding the then Tri Alpha Energy in the Los Angeles area,which was pursuing the project of a colliding beam fusion reactor. Beams of protons and boron are converted into a plasma state that is held together by magnetic fields that are generated by the flow of particles in a cylindrical plasma itself, which is also known as a field-reversed configuration (FRC). Two such plasmas are then collided at high speed and form a cigar-shaped configuration that is up to 3 m long and 40 cm wide. The use of boron and protons in the fusion plasma does not generate high-energy neutrons like the tokamak. According to Rostoker, neutral particles are then injected tangentially at high speed onto the plasma cloud, which follow orbits at the edge of the plasma and serve as a kind of protection against the cooling of the plasma by escaping particles.

In 2015, Tri Alpha announced the successful maintenance of an FRC plasma over five milliseconds.

Awards
In 1962, Rostoker was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society,and then subsequently awarded the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics in 1988.

Rostoker was also awarded the UCI Medal by the University of California, Irvine and was inducted into the Russian Academy of Sciences.

諾曼·羅斯托克（Norman Rostoker）是核聚變的先驅，並且“有點叛逆”（引用他的話）倡導獨立於能源部的研究。他與人共同創立了 Tri Alpha Energy，以推進磁場反轉遏制方法的工作，並於 2014 年 12 月 25 日去世，當時該公司正在建造其第三代機器。

羅斯托克 1925 年 8 月 16 日出生於加拿大多倫多，1947 年在多倫多大學獲得碩士學位。 1950 年從卡內基理工學院畢業，直到 1953 年一直在那裡擔任科研人員。他在 1950 年對地球電阻率的早期研究產生了廣泛的影響。使用低頻電磁波進行現代石油勘探非常有效地利用並擴展了 John Bardeen 和 Rostoker 工作中的物理學。

1954 年，他加入了 Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker 方法，該方法仍然廣泛用於計算固體中的電子能帶結構。他開創了具有庫侖相互作用的粒子統計力學理論，以及等離子體中不均勻性、波動和拉莫爾半徑效應的處理。他通過將測試粒子方法轉化為等離子體物理學來推進他的固態工作，由此可以將帶電粒子氣體視為“修飾”粒子的集合，其中每個單獨的粒子都被自己的屏蔽雲包圍。這簡化了基本屬性計算，尤其是細胞內粒子模擬。

這項工作使他進入了等離子體聚變研究的實踐領域。通過這一演變，他在裝甲研究基金會、伊利諾伊理工大學和通用原子學院工作，然後於 1962 年加入加州大學聖地亞哥分校。他於 1967 年成為康奈爾大學的 IBM 工程學教授，並於 1972 年加入加州大學歐文分校，主持部門。

Rostoker 非常關心使用清潔聚變作為人類發展的幾乎無限、無污染的能源來源。一旦他為這項技術奠定了理論基礎，他就將注意力轉向了它的實現。

Rostoker 的專長是將理論應用於聚變反應堆開發前沿的物理和工程技術。在第一代聚變先驅中，Rostoker 很早就看到了場反轉磁約束幾何結構的簡單性。如果磁場線不穿透固體表面，磁性“瓶”是有效的，它們自身閉合成圓形或環形表面。類似托科馬克的主線約束概念在環形室中執行此操作，允許控制磁性配置，但要求非常複雜的結構。在場反轉配置中，場線是封閉的，提供了良好的約束，但腔室是圓柱形的，便於構建和維護。可以避免託卡馬克的異常傳輸特性，緊湊的反應堆設計變得可行。

在 UCI，Rostoker 追求使用集體等離子體場來協助離子加速並建立形成場反轉幾何形狀的電流；僅此一項，他就擁有 27 項美國專利。他的實驗室專注於設計解決中心聚變問題的新方法，將理論轉化為硬件。

聚變需要極高能量的離子。 Rostoker 最重要的見解是，像加速器中的那些高能、大軌道粒子能夠通過將它們的影響平均到幾乎為零來“克服”破壞性的等離子體湍流。這可以克服妨礙其他設計的各種等離子體不穩定性。 Rostoker 的另一個目標是通過使用硼質子聚變反應來開發一種聚變反應堆，該反應堆不會因中子俘獲而使其周圍結構退化。

除了在等離子體和固態物理學方面的傑出學術生涯外，他還是一位頑強的企業家，通過私營公司在大功率加速器和清潔聚變能源發電領域推動技術前沿的發展。 “他擅長‘永不屈服’的理念，”他的學生 Michl Binderbauer 指出。 Rostoker 在加州大學歐文分校的小組隨後剝離了 Tri Alpha Energy，以進一步開展工作。由於無法從能源部獲得足夠的資金，Rostoker 此後讓公司獨立於此類支持。他於 2012 年在 UCI 設立了該領域的主席。

Norman Rostoker was a nuclear fusion pioneer and “somewhat a renegade” (to quote him) advocate of research independent of the Department of Energy. He co-founded Tri Alpha Energy to advance work in magnetic field-reversed containment methods and died Dec. 25, 2014 as that company was building its third generation machine.

Rostoker was born Aug. 16, 1925, in Toronto, Canada, and earned a master’s degree at the University of Toronto in 1947. He received a D.Sc. in 1950 from the Carnegie Institute of Technology and was on the scientific staff there until 1953. His early work on electrical resistivity of the earth in 1950 had widespread impact. Modern petroleum prospecting with low frequency electromagnetic waves uses, and expands upon, the physics in John Bardeen's and Rostoker's work very productively.

In 1954 he added to the Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker method, still widely used in calculating the electronic band structure in solids. He pioneered theories of the statistical mechanics of particles with Coulomb interactions and to the treatment of inhomogeneities, fluctuations and Larmor radius effects in plasmas. He carried forward from his solid state work by translating the test particle method into plasma physics, whereby a gas of charged particles can be considered as a collection of “dressed” particles in which each individual particle is surrounded by its own shielding cloud. This simplifies basic property calculations and especially particle-in-cell simulations.

This work led him into the practical side of plasma fusion research. Through this evolution he worked at the Armour Research Foundation, the Illinois Institute of Technology and General Atomics, before joining the faculty at UC San Diego in 1962. He became the IBM Professor of Engineering at Cornell University in 1967 and in 1972 joined UC Irvine, chairing the department.

Rostoker cared deeply about using clean fusion as a source of almost unlimited, nonpolluting energy for human development. As soon as he had established the theoretical foundation for the technology, he turned his attention to its realization.

Rostoker’s forte was applying theory to physics and engineering technology at the forefront of fusion reactor development. Among the first generation of fusion pioneers, Rostoker early saw the simplicity of field-reversed magnetic confinement geometries. Magnetic “bottles” are effective if the field lines do not penetrate solid surfaces, closing on themselves into circles or toroidal surfaces. The mainline confinement concepts of like tokomaks do this in a toroidal chamber, allowing control over the magnetic configuration, but demanding very complex construction. In field-reversed configurations field lines are closed, providing good confinement, but the chamber is cylindrical, allowing easy construction and maintenance. The anomalous transport characteristic of tokamaks can be avoided and a compact reactor design becomes viable.

At UCI, Rostoker pursued using collective plasma fields to assist in ion acceleration and to build the currents that shape a field-reversed geometry; in this alone he held 27 U.S. patents. His laboratory focused on devising new approaches to the central fusion problems, translating theory into hardware.