Plasma Physics
Owing to the high stored energy of ITER plasmas, the heat pulses due to uncontrolled Type I edge localized modes (ELMs) can be sufficient to melt the top surface of several poloidal rows of tungsten monoblocks in the divertor strike point…
Runaway electron incidence on plasma facing components triggers explosive events that are accompanied by the expulsion of fast solid debris. Subsequent dust-wall high speed impacts constitute a mechanism of wall damage and dust destruction.…
The MEMENTO (MEtallic Melt Evolution in Next-step TOkamaks) code is a new numerical implementation of the physics model originally developed for the MEMOS-U code with the objective to self-consistently describe the generation of melt and…
A new model, inspired by the structure of galactic disks, for three-dimensional Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal (BGK) modes in a plasma with a uniform finite background magnetic field is presented. These modes are exact nonlinear solutions of the…
We investigate how growth of an oxide film will influence the deuterium recycling properties of Li on plasma facing surfaces. Lithium films on the walls or plasma-facing material surfaces of a fusion vacuum vessel improves plasma…
Plasma current instabilities can destabilize the plasma discharge and cool the plasma rapidly. In such $\textit{disruptions}$ or in the start-up phase of the reactor, inductive electric fields are generated which accelerate electrons to…
We report the experimental observation of fully developed Kolmogorov turbulence originating from self-excited vortex flows in a three-dimensional (3D) dust cloud. The characteristic -5/3 scaling of three-dimensional Kolmogorov turbulence is…
We derive an advanced surrogate model for predicting turbulent transport at the edge of tokamaks driven by electron temperature gradient (ETG) modes.Our derivation is based on a recently developed sensitivity-driven sparse grid…
Thermal quench of a nearly collisionless plasma against a cooling boundary or region is an undesirable off-normal event in magnetic fusion experiments, but an ubiquitous process of cosmological importance in astrophysical plasmas. There is…
Bright transient objects in different wave bands have been discovered in recent years. To explain these short (from ms to s), and very powerful events different models, galactic and extragalactic, have been considered. One of popular model…
The physics of neoclassical tearing mode (NTM) is of great concern to the tokamak plasma stability and performance, especially in the burning plasma regime. Whereas a great deal about the different seeding mechanisms have been understood,…
We propose a novel reformulation of the Vlasov-Amp{\`e}re equations for plasmas. This reformulation exposes discrete symmetries to achieve simultaneous conservation of mass, momentum, and energy; preservation of Gauss's law involution;…
In fusion plasmas, where electron temperatures $T_e$ range from keV to hundreds of keV, Bremsstrahlung radiation constitutes a significant energy loss mechanism. While various thermal average fitting formulas exist in the literature, their…
An integrated data analysis system based on Bayesian inference has been developed for application to data from multiple diagnostics over the two-dimensional cross-section of tokamak divertors. Tests of the divertor multi-instrument Bayesian…
In this paper, we introduce a new family of spatially co-located field solvers for particle-in-cell applications which evolve the potential formulation of Maxwell's equations under the Lorenz gauge. Our recent work introduced the concept of…
Based on the electron-ion model, parameters of ball and bead lightning are calculated. The model allows us to estimate maximum size of ball lightning, its energy content, electric charge and magnetic field, to determine equilibrium…
Three novel applications of computational topology in the field of fusion science are developed. A procedure for the automatic classification of the orbits of magnetic field lines into topologically distinct classes using Vietoris-Rips…
The physical goal of fusion energy research is to confine fusion fuel in a certain way so that the energy released from fusion exceeds the energy consumed to sustain the fusion process, thereby achieving economically viable energy…
Stellarator magnetic fields that are perfectly optimized for neoclassical transport (with levels of radial neoclassical transport comparable to tokamaks) are called omnigenous. Quasi-isodynamic magnetic fields are a subset of omnigenous…
We present an analytical model describing a stable shock-like structure that is formed when an ultra-intense laser propagates through an underdense plasma. It is shown that such structures exist in a wide range of laser-plasma parameters,…