Topological Waves in Non-Hermitian Plasmas and Enabling Technologies

This award supports development of new ways to understand and control waves in a plasma, an ionized electrically conducting gas used for fusion energy and many other advanced technologies. Some plasma waves can behave like one-way roads for energy: they can travel along protected paths and resist being scattered by imperfections. By learning how such waves work, better methods may be developed for heating fusion plasmas, driving electric current in fusion energy devices, and guiding energy in plasma accelerators. The project will also broaden the scientific foundation of quantum information science by its use and extension of concepts central to modern quantum and topological physics, potentially enabling further advances in the study of quantum materials and topological phases of matter. The award will contribute to STEM workforce development via support for graduate student training. The project will investigate the physics of topological waves in non-Hermitian and kinetic plasmas. These are realistic plasmas in which inhomogeneity, flow, and wave-particle interaction can make the governing wave operators more complicated than the idealized Hermitian models usually studied in topological physics. Parity-time symmetry, spectral-flow index theory, Vlasov-Maxwell kinetic theory, structure-preserving simulations, and computational topology will be used to determine when topological protection survives in realistic plasma conditions. Applications to robust radio-frequency heating and current drive in fusion plasmas, as well as to topological plasma accelerators, will be examined. Although the physical systems studied in this project are classical plasmas, the work may provide new theoretical and computational insight into how topological protection, spectral flow, and non-Hermitian dynamics operate in continuous physical media without lattice structures, thereby contributing to the broader scientific framework underlying quantum and topological technologies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2605414 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Hong Qin | Institution: Princeton University, PRINCETON, NJ | Award Amount: $519,987 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2605414 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2605414.html