Application of Neural Networks to Plasma Data Analysis

A special issue of Plasma (ISSN 2571-6182).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2026 | Viewed by 193

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Department of Physics, University “La Sapienza”, 00185 Rome, Italy
Interests: plasma physics; neural networks
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Dear Colleagues,

Our understanding of the physics of plasma has been mostly developed using tokamaks. This device is rather complicated, with many unknown variables to control in order for a fusion experiment to begin. Magnetic configuration, internal currents, geometric configuration. There are also various instabilities that should be controlled, including Alfven waves, elms, runaway electrons, and disruptions. All of these issues have been evaluated in various tokamaks and somehow controlled. It is possible to collect all these data and study the most efficient options using a multilayer perceptron, i.e., artificial intelligence.

Prof. Dr. Brunello Tirozzi
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • self-averaging in neural networks
  • learning algorithms
  • monte carlo simulation for optimization of neural network performance
  • critical capacity
  • pattern retrieval and recognition
  • overlap parameters
  • self-organizing maps
  • free energy and entropy in neural networks

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 399 KiB  
Article
Ionospheric Electron Density and Temperature Profiles Using Ionosonde-like Data and Machine Learning
by Jean de Dieu Nibigira and Richard Marchand
Plasma 2025, 8(2), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/plasma8020024 - 16 Jun 2025
Viewed by 89
Abstract
Predicting the behaviour of the Earth’s ionosphere is crucial for the ground-based and spaceborne technologies that rely on it. This paper presents a novel way of inferring ionospheric electron density profiles and electron temperature profiles using machine learning. The analysis is based on [...] Read more.
Predicting the behaviour of the Earth’s ionosphere is crucial for the ground-based and spaceborne technologies that rely on it. This paper presents a novel way of inferring ionospheric electron density profiles and electron temperature profiles using machine learning. The analysis is based on the Nearest Neighbour (NNB) and Radial Basis Function (RBF) regression models. Synthetic data sets used to train and validate these two inference models are constructed using the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI 2020) model with randomly chosen years (1987–2022), months (1–12), days (1–31), latitudes (−60 to 60°), longitudes (0, 360°), and times (0–23 h), at altitudes ranging from 95 to 600 km. The NNB and RBF models use the constructed ionosonde-like profiles to infer complete ISR-like profiles. The results show that the inference of ionospheric electron density profiles is better with the NNB model than with the RBF model, while the RBF model is better at inferring the electron temperature profiles. A major and unexpected finding of this research is the ability of the two models to infer full electron temperature profiles that are not provided by ionosondes using the same truncated electron density data set used to infer electron density profiles. NNB and RBF models generally over- or underestimate the inferred electron density and electron temperature values, especially at higher altitudes, but they tend to produce good matches at lower altitudes. Additionally, maximum absolute relative errors for electron density and temperature inferences are found at higher altitudes for both NNB and RBF models. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Neural Networks to Plasma Data Analysis)
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