Physics-Informed Neural Networks to Infer the Perpendicular Energy Conductivity in the Scrape-Off Layer of Stellarator Devices

Abstract

In this work, we develop an inverse Physics-Informed Neural Network (PINN) framework to infer the dependence of the scrape-off layer (SOL) perpendicular heat conductivity on plasma density and temperature, $κ_\perp(n,T)$. The method combines radial profile measurements of electron density and temperature with the residual of a reduced one-dimensional SOL transport equation, so that the inferred conductivity is constrained by both the measurements and the underlying transport model. Three neural networks are trained simultaneously: two reconstruct the temperature and density profiles as functions of the radial coordinate and transported power, while a third represents the effective conductivity as a function of the local density and temperature. The framework is first validated using synthetic data generated from a prescribed conductivity function, allowing the inferred $κ_\perp(n,T)$ to be compared directly with the ground truth. The model recovers the imposed functional dependence with errors below $10~\%$ in the data-constrained region. Bootstrap resampling is shown to provide a practical indicator of prediction reliability and consistency. A scan in the number of plasma profiles used for training and the number of radial measurement positions per profile identifies a practical trade-off between reconstruction accuracy and data availability. Finally, the method is applied to an experimental dataset from the TJ-II stellarator obtained with the helium-beam diagnostic. This exploratory application provides an initial estimate of the effective SOL conductivity and illustrates the potential of inverse PINNs for extracting transport information from plasma edge measurements.