Exotic plasma instabilities in strongly rotating tokamak plasmas

2020年，我在伦敦帝国学院(Imperial College London)留学一年，完成了物理学硕士学位，长期以来一直对核聚变感兴趣。直到我写了关于托卡马克磁流体力学不稳定性的硕士论文后，我才坚定了在该领域追求学术生涯的愿望。我将在约克等离子体研究所开始一个名为“强旋转托卡马克等离子体中的奇异等离子体不稳定性”的博士项目，由霍华德·威尔逊(约克大学)和乔纳森·格雷夫斯(洛桑EPFL)监督。中性束注入，通常用于加热托卡马克等离子体，为等离子体提供动量。通过这种方式，它可以在像MAST-U这样的托卡马克中驱动显著的等离子体旋转，在这一点上，离心力和科里奥利效应变得重要。这些可能会影响等离子体不稳定性的行为，甚至会引入新的不稳定性。由于未来的托卡马克装置，如STEP和ITER将经历非常少的旋转流，所以现在研究它如何影响等离子体动力学和稳定性是很重要的。我的项目将重点研究旋转驱动的开尔文亥姆霍兹类不稳定性，使用分析方法和计算模型相结合的方法。特别是，目标是确定这些不稳定性发生的条件，并开发一个可以扩展到未来托卡马克的计算模型。

I completed my MSci in Physics With a Year Abroad at Imperial College London in 2020 and have long been interested in nuclear fusion. My desire to pursue an academic career in the field only solidified after I wrote my master's thesis on the topic of magnetohydrodynamic instabilities in tokamaks. I will be starting a PhD project at the York Plasma Institute entitled "Exotic Plasma Instabilities in Strongly Rotating Tokamak Plasma" and supervised by Howard Wilson (University of York) and Jonathan Graves (EPFL, Lausanne).Neutral beam injection, commonly used for heating tokamak plasmas, imparts momentum to the plasma. In this way it can drive significant plasma rotation in tokamaks like MAST-U, at which point centrifugal and Coriolis effects become important. These can affect the behavior of plasma instabilities and even introduce new ones. Because future tokamaks like STEP and ITER will experience very little rotational flow it is important to study now how it can impact plasma dynamics and stability. My project will focus on studying rotation-driven Kelvin Helmholtz-like instabilities using a combination of analytical methods and computational modelling. In particular, the goal is to identify the conditions for which these instabilities occur and develop a computational model which may be extended to future tokamaks.