Two Tokamak Poems
Song of the Stray Electron
I wrote the following poem in 1989 when we commissioned the ADITYA tokamak which produces plasmas at temperatures of 5 Million Degrees at the Institute for Plasma Research in Gandhinagar. The tokamak discharge starts with an electric field being induced around the torus which accelerates stray electrons to sufficient energy for them to ionize gas molecules and produce electron-ion pairs. The product electrons and the parent electrons are further accelerated to produce two new electron-ion pairs. This process, called an avalanche continues until the chamber gets filled with billions of electron ion pairs, which is the plasma, the stuff that stars are made of. This poem is about a tokamak discharge from the perspective of the ‘stray’ electron, which starts the whole process.
Transient in birth, quirk of a cosmic photon
trapped in this shell made of steel and viton
dreading my fate, the burial in steel, I thought
I could hear the distant mind say, ‘Begin the shot’!
and I realized that my predestined part
was that I should kindle a starfire in Bhat.
Stroked by the tendrils of the induction field,
decreed by Lenz and Faraday, to yield
and start my free fall, inertia and all
round and round, away from the silvery wall
caught in the clasp of this magnetic maze
survival of the fastest is the secret of this race.
By now, we are a crowd, those who started late
have also joined the race, given the mandate
to jostle the atoms, excite a few.
Deep in the torus is the shade of a glow
before the distant mind could say avalanche
we have gone forth and multiplied in revanche.
Companions freed from the bondage a la Bohr
collective consciousness begins to soar
the transient surge over, transformer will soon tire
Catch the impure, burn them in our fire.
Break through the barriers, radiation and others
soar to the flat top, promised by the designers.
We dance, saw teeth and radiate
in a ring of fire, primeval, inchoate
you outside who listen to our heart beat
it shall not matter that we shall quench or disrupt
if only you would say in our obit
that, for a moment, we made a starlet.
An Ode to ITER
I wrote this poem in 2007 while visiting Aix en Provence in connection with negotiating India’s plan to become a party to building the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). ITER, a miniature sun on earth is a complex machine where cleverly designed magnetic field topology would trap and confine a Hydrogen-Deuterium plasma at 100 millions of degrees from losing particles and heat. The reactor is making good progress though slowed done by technology issues. In one of the many visits to Cadarache during the ITER negotiations, I was taken to the site where ITER would eventually be built. The site is now a busy complex with hundreds of physicists and engineers fighting against time to produce the first plasma.
In the rocky wilderness of Cadarache
wizards from seven lands will converge
to build a great temple to Prometheus
with the sun replicated and bound in a torus.
Remember all those lifetimes spent and lost
Searching, researching and hoping to find
those secrets we thought would lead us to plan
the temple of sun that would one day be built.
Pinches, mirrors, torii, traps so diverse,
pellets of ice to be lit by lasers;
fusion in bubbles and alchemist’s jars
chasing the dreams that remind you of stars.
Remember too then the furious fights
on selecting the most auspicious site
and the rules, protocols, none too simple
for tending the sacred fire in the temple.
Here at last we spin the magnetic web
and hold the plasma as storms rise and ebb
lighter than mist and purer than pure
hotter than sun for the nuclear fire.
Centuries hence new myths will go forth
on how at last the Sun came down to earth
and how Prometheus was finally freed
not by the gods but by human spirit.
