The high magnetic field path to fusion energy

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), in collaboration with MIT, has built and demonstrated the world's largest (110 MJ), high-field (20 T) high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet. This magnet is the key technology for CFS's high-field path to fusion energy and retires the major technical risks for the technology, enabling CFS to go ahead with construction of SPARC, a tokamak with a mission to demonstrate net fusion energy in 2025. This talk will place the high-field tokamak path in context of the greater fusion ecosystem, lay out the physics basis for the high-field path, and describe the challenges to taking the next steps.