Fast-ion Physics and Tomography

We study the physics of energetic particles in magnetized fusion plasmas in tokamaks and stellarators, e.g. plasma heating and energetic particle orbits, transport, and instability drive. Our goal is to tackle the qualitatively new energetic particle physics in burning plasmas in next-step fusion devices such as ITER.

To develop methods for measuring non-Maxwellian 1D-5D energetic particle distribution functions, we first understand the sensitivity of the available diagnostics in position and velocity space, formulate an inverse problem, and solve it by methods akin to tomography and by neural networks. A measured 2D fast-ion velocity distribution function at the tokamak JET appears below.

We study energetic particle physics at the tokamaks JET, ASDEX Upgrade, DIII-D, EAST, TCV, K-STAR, MAST and NSTX and the stellarators LHD and Wendelstein 7-X within a worldwide joint experiment under the ITPA Energetic Particle Physics Group.

See article about: Fast-ion velocity distribution inferred for the JET tokamak using tomography