138: Chapter 138 Cooperation

Chen Youhua had just finished dealing with the phone call from his parents, and his phone was even running a bit hot.

On the other end of the line, his mother's voice was full of confusion.

"Youhua, aren't you supposed to be into mathematics? Why is the internet spreading rumors that you're some kind of machine biology expert? And that you made a robotic monkey?"

It took Chen Youhua about ten minutes to explain the relationship between the neural interface prosthetic limb project and his original field of mathematics, trying his best to use words his parents could understand.

He knew, of course, that his parents asked these things mostly because they missed him, wanted to hear his voice more, and wanted to know what he had been busy with lately and whether he was doing well.

The logic behind those questions might have been a bit chaotic, and their expression clumsy, but that pure concern and longing were real.

That was why he was always exceptionally patient; even if they were just chatting about trivial household matters or fragmented news they had seen online, he listened carefully and responded.

After hanging up, Chen Youhua rubbed his temples and walked into his office.

"enlightenment, print out the key parts of the fusion data we processed earlier."

"Understood, Father, it will be done immediately."

enlightenment's voice echoed in the office, and the printer nearby immediately began working, emitting a faint buzzing sound.

Soon, a stack of paper still warm from the toner was delivered to Chen Youhua's hands.

He brewed a cup of strong tea, sat down, and began to carefully flip through the core dataset sent over by Chief Engineer Yang.

The data was vast and complex, covering a large amount of diagnostic information from the east device operating under high parameters.

Plasma temperature, plasma density, energy confinement time, energy loss channel analysis, magnetic field configuration and stability, high-energy particle behavior, and so on.

Chen Youhua looked through them item by item, his brows furrowing and relaxing by turns.

"So that's how it is..."

He muttered to himself.

After reading through this data, he finally truly understood the heaviness and urgency Chief Engineer Yang had shown that day.

Rabbit Country's fusion research was by no means the "always fifty years away" that the outside world joked about.

This data clearly showed that the core plasma physics problems had already been touched upon in substance, and their engineering capability to control high temperatures, strong magnetic fields, and extreme environmental materials was also quite considerable.

Even without his, Chen Youhua's, intervention, given the existing accumulation and investment, Chen Youhua believed that achieving controllable nuclear fusion was something that could be expected to break through within the next ten to twenty years.

Chief Engineer Yang's team had laid a very solid foundation.

However, in Chen Youhua's eyes, there was huge room for optimization hidden within this data, which had just been obscured by complex physical phenomena and engineering constraints.

"enlightenment, open the data package from Chief Engineer Yang, highlight the energy confinement time, boundary heat flux, turbulent transport coefficients, and high-energy particle trajectory datasets, and project them onto the screen."

Chen Youhua instructed, his voice carrying the calm before entering deep thought.

"Received, Father."

enlightenment's image appeared in the corner of the projected screen, and the huge display was immediately filled with complex data streams, waveform graphs, and 3D field distribution maps.

Lines of various colors intertwined and leaped, representing the state of that violent, hundred-million-degree miniature sun inside the tokamak device.

Chen Youhua pulled over a whiteboard, picked up a marker, and swept his gaze—sharp as a torch—over the data that would make an ordinary person dizzy at a single glance.

He precisely captured the abnormal fluctuations that represented the crux of the problem.

"enlightenment, pull up the operating logs of the east device at 150 million degrees in high-density mode, and compare them with our existing standard turbulent transport model predictions."

Chen Youhua pointed to a red curve on the screen representing the actual measured energy loss rate; its rise was extremely abnormal, far outpacing the gradual path predicted by the theoretical model.

"Model predicted loss rate: 3.2 MW/m³. Actual measured peak: 8.7 MW/m³. Deviation exceeds 172%."

enlightenment quickly reported the numbers.

"172%..."

Chen Youhua wrote down this abnormal number on the whiteboard and drew a huge question mark next to it.

"The standard model underestimated the turbulent energy cascade and dissipation under extreme conditions. The problem lies in the coupling strength of the nonlinear terms."

He muttered to himself, his pen tip flying across the whiteboard as he wrote down a set of complex partial differential equations—the core magnetohydrodynamic equations describing plasma turbulence.

"enlightenment, using the existing data as boundary conditions, brute-force solve this set of equations, perform a full parameter space scan, and find the nonlinear coupling coefficient matrix that best matches the actual measured energy loss curve. Prioritize computing power, precision is secondary; I want to see the general trend."

"Understood! Starting full parameter scan; estimated computing power usage is one percent, time required is two minutes."

enlightenment's image seemed to brighten slightly as its massive computing power began to run frantically, using a method of predictive thinking and calculation to fit that red curve.

Chen Youhua's pen did not stop; it moved to another set of data.

Records of Edge Localized Mode (ELM) bursts.

Every burst represented a torrent of uncontrolled energy striking the first wall.

"enlightenment, analyze the precursor signals of the last 100 major ELM events, and look for common fluctuation characteristics, magnetic shear change rates, and pressure gradient critical points. Establish a feature database."

"Analyzing... Detected that on average 0.8 seconds before an ELM burst, there is an increase in the magnetic disturbance signal intensity at a specific frequency of 15kHz, the magnetic shear rate drops below the critical value of 0.6, and the pressure gradient exceeds the threshold X point..."

enlightenment quickly extracted and summarized the characteristics.

"0.8 seconds... That's too short; it's very difficult to intervene effectively in engineering terms."

Chen Youhua frowned.

"We need a predictive model that can issue a warning at least 5 seconds before a burst. The key lies in the dynamic equilibrium equation between the pressure gradient and magnetic topology stability."

He turned and wrote another set of equations on the whiteboard, this time regarding plasma equilibrium and stability criteria.

"enlightenment, based on the feature parameters you extracted, use machine learning to train an early warning model. It must be able to predict ELM bursts at least 5 seconds in advance with a probability > 90%. Use 80% of the past data for training and 20% for validation."

"Model training started, injecting historical data into the simulation environment, the algorithm has begun iterative optimization."

enlightenment's large eyes began to focus, and it said earnestly.

Finally, Chen Youhua's gaze locked onto the trajectory simulation map of high-energy alpha particles.

The energy produced by this fusion should have heated the plasma, but quite a lot of it was not conducting in the predetermined direction; instead, it was striking the vessel wall and losing energy.

"enlightenment, select the data points where particle trajectories significantly deviate from the confinement region, and reverse-calculate the background turbulence field spectrum and magnetic field disturbance mode at the moment of their loss."

"Correlating... There is a high correlation between loss events and the intensity peak of a specific 5kHz low-frequency mode in the background turbulence, with a correlation coefficient of 0.87."

enlightenment quickly provided the correlation analysis.

"Low-frequency mode... resonance?"

Chen Youhua's eyes lit up.

"The particles resonate on waves of a specific frequency, gaining energy, which leads to orbital instability."

He added the kinetic equations describing wave-particle interaction to the whiteboard.

"enlightenment, calculate the resonance conditions between this low-frequency turbulent mode and the high-energy particles, and look for active disturbance strategies that can disrupt this resonance. Start with a single-particle orbit simulation."

"Starting single-particle orbit simulator, injecting disturbance parameters... Simulation in progress..."

enlightenment began to simulate the complex orbits of microscopic particles.

This was the first time he had cooperated with enlightenment to solve a problem in this way.

However, he just treated enlightenment as an intelligent supercomputer capable of generating mathematical models on its own and testing them.

And he only needed to be responsible for the mathematical theory part, providing core guidance.

Time flowed silently amidst the formulas and data.

The sky outside the window turned from dark to light, and then from light to dark again.

Chen Youhua's whiteboard had long since been filled, erased, and filled again.