Artificial Intelligence Empowering Digital Tokamak Systems: Research Progress, Challenges and Prospects

This study focuses on the application of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in digital tokamak systems. Through systematic literature review and analysis, it expounds the application status, system construction, technical roadmap, and integration pathways of AI technologies in this field. The research shows that AI technologies have demonstrated significant advantages in plasma control, disruption prediction, and state recognition, effectively enhancing the performance and efficiency of digital tokamak systems. Meanwhile, this study constructs an architectural framework for AI-empowered digital tokamaks, and sorts out the technical roadmap covering multidisciplinary fields such as plasma physics, materials science, and control engineering, and proposes a full-process integration pathway from data fusion and model construction to application deployment. Although certain achievements have been made, challenges remain in model interpretability, data quality and scale, real-time requirements, and multi-scenario adaptability. In the future, deepening the application of AI in digital tokamak systems and advancing controlled nuclear fusion research to new heights will require interdisciplinary collaboration, algorithmic innovation, and data governance.