Plasma Physics
Foreshock transients upstream of the Earth's bow shock, such as foreshock bubbles and hot flow anomalies, are often characterized by reduced-density cores and strong plasma fluctuations. These conditions provide environments where…
AI models have demonstrated strong predictive capabilities for various tokamak instabilities--including tearing modes (TM), ELMs, and disruptive event--but their opaque nature raises concerns about safety and trustworthiness when applied to…
We demonstrate a mechanism for reconciling high confinement with heat exhaust in fusion plasmas. Global fluid turbulence simulations of the Quasicontinuous Exhaust regime in the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak show that a quasi-coherent mode (QCM)…
In this work, we investigate prompt ion drift orbit losses caused by shear Alfv\'en waves (SAW) in quasi-symmetric (QS) and quasi-isodynamic (QI) stellarators optimized for equilibrium confinement of energetic particles (EPs). We use the…
Energizing background ions plays a pivotal role in all forms of thermal nuclear fusion, as it can increase the fusion reaction rate without affecting the overall mechanical equilibrium. This is particularly critical for p11B fusion due to…
Modelling the dynamics of complex physical systems is a fundamental challenge, particularly where nonlinear dynamics and multi-scale interactions render traditional simulations computationally prohibitive. Nuclear fusion plasma represents a…
Forced reconnection in Voigt-regularized MHD is investigated in the Hahm-Kulsrud-Taylor problem. It is shown that Voigt regularization introduces an early linear phase of reconnection that partially bypasses the ideal current sheet…
We take issue with the conclusions in the recent publication by Savard et al. In the study, the authors implement a fully nonlinear charge- and energy-conserving implicit particle-in-cell method (ECC-IPIC), and use it to study the impact of…
We present results from a new Kinetic-Equilibrium Prediction (KEP) workflow and shot preparation for full TCV discharges, by coupling predict-first RAPTOR transport simulations with FBT inverse equilibrium calculations. RAPTOR is a 1.5D…
Magnetic reconnection can develop spontaneously via the tearing instability, often invoked to explain disruptive instabilities in fusion devices, solar flares, the generation of periodic density disturbances at the tip of helmet streamers,…
Earth's magnetosphere hosts a wide range of collisionless particle populations that interact through various wave-particle processes. Among these, cold electrons, with energies below 100eV, often dominate the plasma density but remain…
Centrifugal plasma traps, in which plasma is confined partly by centrifugal forces, represent a possible path to fusion energy production. In centrifugal plasma traps, electric fields naturally arise in the direction parallel to the…
How momentum, energy, and magnetic fields are transported in the presence of macroscopic gradients is a fundamental question in plasma physics. Answering this question is especially challenging for weakly collisional, magnetized plasmas,…
We present a novel mechanism in which plasma electrons and ions optically acquire angular momentum during local pump depletion of an azimuthally polarized laser, despite the laser carrying none. Using theoretical considerations and…
To quantify the sensitivity of diverse implosion designs to laser imprinting, we developed an equivalent perturbation model that maps laser imprinting as the target surface perturbation. By incorporating imperfections in target fabrication…
Atmospheric-pressure non-thermal plasmas are promising platforms for advanced oxidation in water treatment, yet quantitative coupling between reactive species delivery, solution chemistry, and molecular fragmentation remains unclear. We…
Aims. We investigated plasma turbulence in the context of solar wind. We concentrated on properties of ideal second-order magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) and Hall MHD invariants. Methods. We studied the results of a two-dimensional hybrid…
We investigate the feasibility of negative triangularity (NT) plasma configurations in the SPARC tokamak, a compact, high-field device (up to 12.2 T) designed for positive triangularity (PT) operation. Using the FreeGS free-boundary…
Deuterium-tritium fusion reactions produce high-energy neutrons that can transmute materials into valuable isotopes. Over the next ten years, the cost of fusion neutrons is projected to decrease by roughly seven orders of magnitude. Most…
In this paper, we compare experimental and numerical simulation results to benchmark the PERSEUS code against gas-puff $Z$-pinch implosions on COBRA. We then use the code to investigate the structure of the plasma sheath. To this end, we…