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Introduction

This is the beta version of SOLPS Tutorials

Until this warning box disappears, it is possible that the documentation won't work correctly. Everything should be fixed at latest for the SOLPS Code Camp on 19-23 October 2026.

Welcome to SOLPS Tutorials, home to step-by-step guides on using the SOLPS-ITERopen_in_new transport code! Accessible documentation for beginners is our goal. As the main author, Kateřina Hromasová, says:

"I want tutorials that are so easy to understand that I'll be able to use them out of the box after I come back from a three-year maternity leave."

The SOLPS Tutorials webpage is compiled using MkDocsopen_in_new from its source code, hosted on the ITER Organisation GitHubopen_in_new. If you wish to contribute, read the Contribute tutorial.

SOLPS Tutorials logo

SOLPS Tutorials logo: a supra-luminal unicorn (why?)

SOLPS Tutorials are sorted into three basic categories parts:

  1. My first SOLPS simulation. This includes installing SOLPS, creating a simulation, running the simulation, processing its output and adjusting its input.

  2. Feature blog, or making your SOLPS simulation more complex. This includes diffusion coefficients, gas puffing and pumping, impurities, drifts, wide grids, and deep dives on magnetic equilibrium reconstructions, energy fluxes and interpretative simulations.

  3. Supplementary material, which helps you use SOLPS aside from the physics. This includes SOLPS-ITER user wisdom, a library, remote access, common pitfalls, questions and answers and B2.5 switch documentation.

When contributing to the tutorials, please respect this underlying structure.

First steps

To familiarise yourself with SOLPS-ITER and SOLPS Tutorials, you can do the following:

Brief introduction to SOLPS-ITER

SOLPS-ITER is a suite of codes (B2.5, EIRENE, DivGeo, Carre...) which performs 2D (toroidally symmetric) simulations of the tokamak edge plasma. Its strength is self-consistently modelling interaction between the plasma, neutrals and the wall. It is indispensable for predicting if future fusion reactors will melt their divertors or not.

Essential SOLPS-ITER reading:

Recommended SOLPS-ITER reading:

Your documentation could be here!

Although SOLPS Tutorials does not aim to substitute existing SOLPS documentation, they do aspire to become its central hub. If you have written any sort of SOLPS-related documentation, consider contributing to SOLPS Tutorials or adding your work to the Useful links section.

Contributors

Kateřina Hromasová

"If you don't write it down, you'll forget it."

Katka was two years into her PhD on SOLPS-ITER when she got married, agreed on three kids, and realised she'd better get started. To avoid forgetting everything, she began writing down all she knew. She shared her notes with her colleagues, got help putting them up on the internet, realised people outside IPP Prague actually read them, rewrote them to pretend she was a professional... and that's how SOLPS Tutorials were born.

Jan Hečko

"The smaller and easier a task is, the lower it is on my to-do list."

Honza has awesome superpowers, such as being one with the source code. He is responsible for the installation tutorials, the B2.5 switch documentation and the website formatting. He also wrote most of the Gas puffing and pumping and Drifts tutorials, and he got the Wide grids tutorial started.

Other major contributors to the Tutorials are:

We would also like to thank, in alphabetic order, Xavier Bonnin, Irina Borodkina, David Coster, Michael Komm, Lukáš Kripner, Diana Naydenkova, Jakub Seidl, Oleg Shyshkin, Daniel Švorc, Matěj Tomeš, David Tskhakaya, and Sven Wiesen.