Turbulence and Transport
Advancing predictive understanding of plasma turbulence, transport barriers, and edge plasma physics to improve fusion reactor performance, heat exhaust management, and divertor design.
This project seeks to advance predictive understanding of plasma turbulence and transport in fusion devices, with a focus on pedestal and edge physics critical for a fusion pilot plant. Goals include: (i) identifying and characterizing turbulence mechanisms that govern the pedestal and transport barriers; (ii) developing reduced models to accelerate predictive capability for transport barriers; (iii) achieving physics insights into transport barrier dynamics and the links to the integrated core-edge system; and (iv) innovative divertor solutions integrating heat exhaust with high core confinement. Specific research goals include performing detailed comparisons between SOLPS-ITER fluid and Gkeyll gyro-kinetic simulations of the scrape-off layer (SOL) to address limitations of fluid simulations for divertor design. Develop a velocity dependent, kinetic model for line radiation for continuum kinetic codes, and implementation it in the full-f gyrokinetic code Gkeyll. Investigate the stability of Microtearing modes and turbulence transport in JET pedestals.