A high-fidelity surrogate model for the ion temperature gradient (ITG) instability using a small expensive simulation dataset

One of the main challenges in building high-fidelity surrogate models of tokamak turbulence is the substantial demand for high-quality data. Typically, producing high-quality data involves simulating complex physical processes, which requires extensive computing resources. In this work, we propose a fine tuning-based approach to develop the surrogate model that reduces the amount of high-quality data required by 80%. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach by constructing a proof-of-principle ion temperature gradient surrogate model using datasets generated from two gyrokinetic codes, GKW and GX. GX needs in terms of computing resources are much lighter than GKW. Remarkably, the surrogate models’ performance remain nearly the same whether trained on 798 GKW results alone or 159 GKW results plus an additional 11979 GX results. These encouraging outcomes indicate that fine tuning methods can significantly decrease the high-quality data needed to develop the simulation-driven surrogate model. Moreover, the approach presented here has the potential to facilitate surrogate model development for heavy codes and may ultimately pave the way for digital twin systems of tokamaks.