Fast ions and turbulence in fusion plasmas

托卡马克反应堆中的背景场在极端温度下提供了极好的等离子体约束，但通过扰动这些场的形状，并诱导电场结构，等离子体仍然可以找到逃逸的方法。最终，正是这些不稳定性限制了托卡马克反应堆等离子体的性能：我们需要了解它们，这样我们才能设计出更好的反应堆，并更好地运行现有的实验。特别是MAST-U托卡马克将能够研究在真正燃烧的等离子体中出现的挑战，高能聚变产物和高等离子体压力意味着电磁湍流的性质与现有的实验室设备完全不同。这个学生将使用数值模拟和基础理论的混合来解决这个项目。该项目是英国范围内令人兴奋的合作的一部分，与牛津大学，斯特拉斯克莱德大学和约克大学以及CCFE Culham（英国最大的聚变实验，JET的所在地，以及新的MAST-U托卡马克）合作，以了解等离子体湍流在一系列长度尺度上的作用，从而设计更高效的托卡马克反应堆。成功的候选人将有机会为来自英国各地这些大学的研究人员工作。该学生将负责模拟和分析全球尺度电磁湍流与离子尺度不稳定性的耦合，在具有高压和显著快粒子含量的反应堆等离子体的背景下。在实践中，这将涉及在世界级的超级计算机上运行和解释高性能计算代码，以及理解和探索支撑托卡马克湍流的基本等离子体理论。”

The background fields in tokamak reactors provide excellent confinement of plasmas at extreme temperatures, but by perturbing the shape of these fields, and inducing electric field structures, the plasma can still find a way to escape. Ultimately, it is these instabilities that limit the performance of tokamak reactor plasmas: we need to understand them so we can design better reactors, and run existing experiments better.The MAST-U tokamak in particular will be able to examine the challenges that will arise in a true burning plasma, where high energy fusion products and high plasma pressure mean that the nature of electromagnetic turbulence is quite different to existing laboratory devices. This studentship will tackle that project using a mix of numerical simulation and basic theory.This project forms part of an exciting UK-wide collaboration, with partner universities Oxford, Strathclyde and York, and CCFE Culham (where the UK's largest fusion experiment, JET, is sited, as well as the new MAST-U tokamak), to understand the role of plasma turbulence across a range of length scales and thereby design more efficient tokamak reactors. The successful candidate will have an opportunity to work for researchers from these universities across the UK.The student will be responsible for simulating and analysing the coupling of global-scale electromagnetic turbulence with ion-scale instabilities, in the context of reactor plasmas with high pressures and significant fast particle content. In practice this will involve running and interpret high-performance computing codes on world-class supercomputers, as well as understand and explore the basic plasma theory that underpins tokamak turbulence.'