Upgrading Altator: A Compact Glass Torus for Plasma Science and Education

Altator is a student-built, low-cost plasma demonstration device designed to make plasma science more accessible for education and outreach. Created in response to the lack of hands-on experimental platforms for students, Altator demonstrates that functional plasma devices can be constructed efficiently using modest resources. This poster presents recent upgrades to Altator aimed at expanding its capabilities and enhancing its utility as a teaching and demonstration tool. A major milestone in this development has been the addition of a toroidal field coil. The magnet configuration was designed and analyzed using COMSOL simulations to assess mechanical stress. The resulting system combines hand-wound copper magnetic coils with precision watercooled magnets, producing the expected radial compression of the plasma. Magnetic field strengths were characterized using both experimental measurements and theoretical calculations. Additional upgrades include a redesigned Faraday cage to improve safety and viewing as well as to ease future upgrades, a central control system, and enhancements to the RF matching network to improve plasma heating efficiency. Future work involves integrating basic diagnostics to measure plasma density and temperature under different magnetic and RF configurations. These developments are aimed at creating a laboratory curriculum that supports hands-on learning in plasma physics.