Get Publication AlertsNew fusion research delivered to your inbox.
F. Petreri, L. D’Alia, L. Muzzi, F. Giorgetti, M. Bombardieri, G. Ruta, A. Anemona, D. Indrigo, G.M. Polli, G. Ramogida
Yogendra S. Panchal, G. Ivan Maldonado
Mohamad Abdallah, Bjorn Cole, Daniel Clark, Jonas Kessing, Felipe Novais, Jonathan Naish, Paul Humrickhouse
Yanli Peng, Runqin Liu, Yang Li, Shali Yang
Baisheng Wang, Zilong Peng, Yinjian Zhao, Zhongxi Ning
Energetic-ion formation in a low-current hollow-cathode plume is investigated using experiments, self-consistent electrostatic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation, and particle-resolved analysis. Retarding potential analyzer measurements show a substantial energetic-ion population over discharge currents of 0.8-3.5 A, while probe measurements reveal broadband plume fluctuations. Two-point phase-derived frequency-wavenumber measurements do not resolve a continuous ion-acoustic dispersion branch within the principal apparent-wavenumber interval. Because the inferred wavenumber is obtained from a cross-spectral phase defined modulo 2pi, the fluctuation diagnostics do not provide an unambiguous modal attribution for the energetic-ion population. A representative PIC plume, used as a qualitative kinetic reference, likewise develops broadband time-dependent electrostatic fluctuations together with a nonthermal energetic-ion population. Particle-resolved analysis shows that the energetic outflow is dominated by ions generated through ionization inside the plume, while source localization biases access to distinct trajectory and escape families. Matched field controls further show that time-averaged and frozen fields strongly suppress access to high-energy trajectories relative to the full time-dependent field over the analyzed interval. At the single-particle level, ion kinetic-energy gain is determined by electrostatic-field work accumulated along the actual trajectory, with different escape families exhibiting distinct radial and axial work contributions. These results establish a source-trajectory-field-work pathway for energetic-ion formation that can be identified without first assigning the fluctuating plume to a unique resolved plasma mode.
Ce Wang, Sven Van Loo, Geert Verdoolaege
A kinetic parallel transport code KOBRA based on a finite-volume method is developed to study edge localized mode (ELM) plasma transport from the mid-plane to divertor targets. The large scale separation between the Debye length (~cm) and the connection length (~10-20 m) leads to prohibitive computational cost in full 6D simulations. To alleviate this, an adaptive-mesh refinement (AMR) strategy is employed. Comparisons with uniform-grid simulations show that AMR accurately reproduces the characteristic ELM dynamics, including the rapid rise and slow decay of divertor fluxes, as well as the early-time peak induced by fast electrons. Analysis of the electron distribution and self-consistent electric field reveals that AMR efficiency is closely linked to phase-space evolution. Overall, AMR achieves comparable physical accuracy while reducing memory usage by 30-40% and accelerating computations by up to a factor of two, demonstrating its effectiveness for high-dimensional kinetic ELM simulations.
Sebastian Konewko, Nathan Maestracci, Sven Van Loo
In a fusion device plasma-wall interactions \edit{on the sheath scale} can be modeled as a collisionless problem. When modeling these regions particle-in-cell codes suffer from statistical error originating from undersampling the velocity space. On the other hand, Vlasov codes do not have this issue as they evolve the full distribution function. Here, we present a new finite-volume Vlasov code, kobra, equipped with adaptive-mesh refinement to reduce computational effort. Currently, the code solves the Vlasov-Poisson equations. We validate our code in 1d1v and 1d2v using established benchmarks, i.e. the two-stream instability, Landau damping, the Dory-Guest-Harris instability, and also a classical electrostatic plasma sheath. We find that the code reproduces the theoretical properties of these problems well. More importantly, the adaptive grid provides a computational gain that is likely to scale to higher dimensional, plasma-wall simulations.
J. Gallego, P. Protopapas, A. Bustos, A. Alonso, S. Barquero, A. Baciero, I. Rivera, J. A. Moríñigo, R. Mayo-García
In this work, we develop an inverse Physics-Informed Neural Network (PINN) framework to infer the dependence of the scrape-off layer (SOL) perpendicular heat conductivity on plasma density and temperature, $κ_\perp(n,T)$. The method combines radial profile measurements of electron density and temperature with the residual of a reduced one-dimensional SOL transport equation, so that the inferred conductivity is constrained by both the measurements and the underlying transport model. Three neural networks are trained simultaneously: two reconstruct the temperature and density profiles as functions of the radial coordinate and transported power, while a third represents the effective conductivity as a function of the local density and temperature. The framework is first validated using synthetic data generated from a prescribed conductivity function, allowing the inferred $κ_\perp(n,T)$ to be compared directly with the ground truth. The model recovers the imposed functional dependence with errors below $10~\%$ in the data-constrained region. Bootstrap resampling is shown to provide a practical indicator of prediction reliability and consistency. A scan in the number of plasma profiles used for training and the number of radial measurement positions per profile identifies a practical trade-off between reconstruction accuracy and data availability. Finally, the method is applied to an experimental dataset from the TJ-II stellarator obtained with the helium-beam diagnostic. This exploratory application provides an initial estimate of the effective SOL conductivity and illustrates the potential of inverse PINNs for extracting transport information from plasma edge measurements.
Cameron Kuchta, Jan Egedal, Abhishek Mhatre, Paul Gradney, Joseph Olson, Xinyu Yu, Cary B. Forest
Information on plasma density in laboratory plasmas is commonly acquired using either Langmuir probes or optical diagnostics. Here, we present an alternative approach, inferring the density profile from magnetic measurements of a plasma wave. In particular, during the process of creating a reconnecting current layer for magnetic reconnection experiments in the Big Red Ball, the reconnection drive first launches a large amplitude fast magnetosonic wave. The propagation of the wavefront is measured with high spatial and temporal resolutions by in situ magnetic diagnostics. Given a known uniform background magnetic field strength and the known dispersion relation of the wave, we here show how the characteristics of the wavefront can be applied to determine the initial plasma density profile.
Ou Labun, Calin Hojbota, Mara Klebonas, Mike Downer, Rafal Zgadzaj, Phil Franke, Lance Labun
Laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) sustain accelerating gradients of order $100\,\mathrm{GV/m}$, but routine operation remains difficult: electron beam metrics drift over an operating shift, and the root physical cause is often invisible to the available diagnostics. We formulate LPA operation as a latent state-space model in which three effective interaction-point variables, the normalized laser amplitude $a_0$, the normalized plasma electron density $\tilde n_e$ and the residual pulse chirp $\mathcal{C}$, are inferred from routine electron beam observations by an extended Kalman filter. The emission model, which maps the latent state to the diagnostics, is kept structurally separate from the {transition} model, which describes how the latent state evolves between shots. The separation supports diagnosis in two stages, one asking which latent variable moved and one asking what moved it. The implemented emission model is a toy model, yielding an expected performance in line with current facilities and using 3D blow-out regime dependencies where relevant. We conduct synthetic sessions to test the effectiveness of the detection and attribution protocols, finding that attribution is limited by excitation rather than by shot count or diagnostic resolution. Because the construction needs only a set of physical latent variables, an emission model and a family of hardware-derived transition models, it transfers to other drift-prone subsystems. We argue that the accuracy of the whole procedure is limited by the emission model rather than by the inference method.
Viktor Afanasyev, Lidiia Lobanova, Maxim Semenov-Shefov, Shouxin Wang, Ling Zhang, Haiqing Liu
Xuemin Wu, Youwen Sun, Qun Ma, Shuai Gu, Manni Jia, Yueqiang Liu, Yifeng Wang, Cheng Ye, Pengcheng Xie, Alberto Loarte, et al.
Existence of operational window in both edge safety factor and line averaged plasma density for suppression of ELMs using n=4 Resonant Magnetic Perturbations in low input torque plasmas has been observed in EAST experiment, in which q95 and plasma normalized beta (βN) close to that required in ITER high-Q operation. Here, n is toroidal mode number of the magnetic perturbation. In contrast to previous reports from other tokamaks, there is not only an upper density limit but also a lower one for accessing ELM suppression. Modelling results using the MARS-F code show that the RMP with linear plasma response has a peak at an intermediate density and decays as the density increases or decreases, which results in a minimal RMP field penetration threshold at the intermediate density. In this experiment, the observed lower density limit operationally manifests a sensitivity of the q-profile: different densities alter the edge current profile, which change the alignment of the eigenmode structure with the RMP coil configuration, causing a reduction of the resonant field in both low- and high-density cases, and hence making field penetration more difficult. The modelled window of the strongest resonant plasma response in terms of [⟨ne⟩, q95] agrees well with the observed ELM suppression in EAST. Peeling-ballooning modes stability analysis using the ELITE code shows that plasmas gradually approach peeling instability boundary caused by increase of edge bootstrap current as the plasma density decreases, which is consistent with the observation that ELMs come back again in lower density plasmas for fixed q95. These results indicate that linear modelling with full toroidal geometry can well predict the optimized RMP configuration for ELM suppression and reveal the important roles of pedestal plasma current, which need to be carefully considered in the application of high n RMPs for ELM suppression in future ITER.
Matti Coleman, James Cook, Fabrizio Franza, Ivan Maione, Simon Mcintosh, Hudson Baker, Alexander Ian Blair, Shail Desai, Oliver Funk, Georgina Graham, et al.
As efforts across the world to deliver fusion power enter their respective conceptual design stages, many begin to encounter the difficulties of generating complete designs, evaluating them, performing trade-off studies, and comparing different alternatives. Many organisations successfully use fusion reactor systems codes with low-fidelity formulations of the critical physics and engineering aspects to inform the initial design stage and steer them towards a region of the design space they consider attractive, but struggle to explore the design space in more depth. This work is an overview of the open-source tokamak reactor design framework, BLUEMIRA, built from the BLUEPRINT [1, 2] and MIRA [3, 4] codes, which goes beyond the “classical” systems code paradigm and enables the user to parameterise their reactor designs at higher fidelity. Reactor design workflows ranging from 0-D “radial build” design, equilibrium design, to 3-D CAD and automated neutronics analyses can be run within minutes. We present the functionality implemented in the BLUEMIRA code and demonstrate its application to the conceptual design of a conventional aspect ratio fusion reactor, performing an indicative design study over aspect ratio and number of toroidal field coils.
Luis F. Delgado-Aparicio, Masayuki Ono, Jonathan E. Menard
Kazem Ardaneh, Remi Meyer, Mostafa Hassan, Remo Giust, Chen Xie, Benoit Morel, Ismail Ouadghiri-Idrissi, Luca Furfaro, Luc Froehly, Arnaud Couairon, et al.
João Oliveira, André Torres, António Joaquim Batista, Bernardo B Carvalho, Ivan Ďuran, Aleš Havránek, Tomas Markovic, Marie Vanakova, P Sladek, Jorge Sousa, et al.
A bespoke real-time data acquisition system for the magnetic diagnostic of COMPASS-U was developed. The system targets a high density of galvanicly isolated channels, each with a dedicated 2 MSPS 18-bit converter. Based on the ATCA standard, it supports up to 576 channels in a single sub-rack. The system connects the inductive magnetic sensors to the real-time tokamak control system, performing the digitization, pre-processing, and numerical integration of the magnetic signals. The modular architecture of the system is described and its advantages in handling different types of magnetic sensors are discussed. The front-end modules sit on a data acquisition main-board which reads the digital data from the converters and does the numerical integration of the signals. Since the system operates in a real-time environment where latency is one of the primary concerns, an FPGA serves as its main processing element. The FPGA is part of a System on Module (SoM) which also contains a CPU running a Linux operating system, enabling advanced remote management and supervision capabilities. A prototype of the data acquisition system was built for the purposes of validating its architecture, performance and electronic design. We have successfully demonstrated the operation of the data acquisition system and confirmed its performance meets the requirements for COMPASS-U operation.
Hongfei Zhu, Yangui Li, Yuliang Fang, Xiao Yan, Ming Ding, Xiaxin Cao
G. Bongiovì, I. Catanzaro, D. Bernardi, F.S. Nitti, P. Chiovaro, E. Vallone, J. Maestre, S. Basile, P.A. Di Maio
Yixiao Wang, Zhigang Pu, Xing Ji, Kun Xu
Magnetized ion transport in weakly ionized plasmas ranges from gyroangle-dependent kinetics to Hall-Pedersen drift-diffusion as collisionality and magnetization vary. We develop a polar-harmonic unified gas-kinetic scheme (PH-UGKS) for the ion Vlasov-BGK equation in a uniform magnetic field. The scheme evolves the full ion distribution by coupling a conservative density update to exponential evolution of its nonequilibrium component. Exact collision-rotation integration in gyroangle Fourier space is combined with a time-averaged kinetic flux that incorporates spatial transport and electric acceleration, together with a compact Hall-Pedersen correction to the density flux. The scheme conserves ion number, and analysis establishes second-order temporal consistency and asymptotic preservation of the Hall-Pedersen density limit at fixed magnetization. Numerical tests reproduce ion Bernstein dispersion and Dory-Guest-Harris growth rates and resolve changes in the gyroharmonic spectrum as the collision-to-gyrofrequency ratio varies. The driven ion-flux response agrees with an independent characteristic-Volterra reference, including finite-frequency departures from the instantaneous Hall-Pedersen relation. In collisional tests, accurate responses are obtained with time steps far larger than both the collision time and the gyroperiod. Fixed-resolution density tests confirm convergence to the corresponding Hall-Pedersen discretization. The same kinetic formulation thus connects kinetic response and macroscopic transport without switching to a fluid solver or subcycling microscopic time scales.
Kiwan Park
We investigate the influence of current helicity on the turbulent magnetic diffusivity $β$ using three complementary derivations of the $α$ and $β$ coefficients, based on the large-scale magnetic field $\overline{\mathbf{B}}$, the turbulent velocity $\mathbf{u}$, and the turbulent magnetic field $\mathbf{b}$. Applying these coefficients to raw DNS data, we reconstruct $\overline{\mathbf{B}}$ and compare the results with the original simulations. In the kinematic regime all models agree well with the DNS data. In the nonlinear regime, however, $β_{\mathrm{vv-vw}}$ alone produces unbounded growth of $\overline{\mathbf{B}}$. Including the contribution from turbulent magnetic fields ($β_{\mathrm{bb+jb}}$) suppresses this unphysical growth and restores agreement with the DNS results. We find that kinetic helicity drives $β$ more negative, while current helicity shifts it back toward zero. Weighted combinations of the coefficients further show that the $β$ effect dominates the evolution of $\overline{\mathbf{B}}$ throughout, whereas the $α$ effect becomes important mainly for sustaining the field in the nonlinear regime. The corresponding IDL analysis scripts are provided to facilitate practical implementation of the theoretical models.
© 2019-2026 Triple Product Inc. Content available under CC BY-NC 4.0. Terms of Use
