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Magnetic Fusion
Turbulence in magnetically confined fusion plasmas
There are many scientific and technological challenges involved in creating and maintaining the conditions in a reactor for the maintenance of fusion reactions between light nuclei (isotopes of hydrogen), and the range of research is considerable (https://www.iter.org/): super-conducting magnets, industrial-scale cryo-plants, materials subjected to high heat flux and high irradiation, applied mathematics for simulation, and so on.
Plasma physics plays a central role. The confinement of plasma by intense magnetic fields
must be able to maintain the core of the plasma at temperatures twenty times higher than the temperature at the centre of the sun, while keeping the edge cold enough not to damage the materials on the walls. These very strong temperature and density gradients allow a wide variety of instabilities to develop and coexist on different characteristic scales (electron Larmor radii of a few tens of microns, ionic Larmor radii of a few millimetres, mesoscales, etc.). The turbulence that results from their non-linear development is responsible for the strong radial transport of heat and particles that degrades the quality of confinement in fusion plasmas.
This is the theme of the team’s research work. Controlling the processes of energy loss
of energy generated by turbulence, and controlling instabilities, requires us to develop a detailed understanding of complex non-linear mechanisms, in order to develop and validate theoretical models and simulations that are faithful to experiments, capable of assisting the operation and optimisation of ITER plasmas and future reactors.
Group members :
Marie-Christine Firpo
Özgur Gürcan
Pascale Hennequin
Laure Vermare
Dominique Grésillon
Cyrille Honoré, group leader
Pierre Morel, group leader
Vitaliy Pisarev
post-docs:
Elisée Trier (IPP Garching)
PhD students:
Hanen Oueslati
former PhD and post-docs:
Robin Leybros, Ecole Centrale Marseille (AREVA)
Alexandre Storelli, EDX (streamroot)
Katy Ghantous, DRE Polytechnique
Rameswar Singh, Dpt Physique, Polytechnique (UC San Diego)
Romain Meyrand, (Marie Curie, USA)
Sara Moradi, (ULB)
Vincent Berionni, EDX (SAUR)
Pierre Cottier, EDX (co-direction C. Bourdelle, bourse CEA)
Wahb Ettoumi, EDX, bourse Monge (Nomura)
Cédric Reux (ingénieur-chercheur CEA)
Pierre Morel (Maitre de Conférence U-PSud, LPP)
Chris McDevitt (Los Alamos National Laboratory)
Sedina Tsikata (Prix René Pellat SFP 2011, CR CNRS, Icare Orléans)
Elisée Trier (IPP Garching)
Laurent Liard (Maitre de Conférence, LAPLACE Toulouse)
Thomas Gerbaud (chercheur CDD, DIFFER Pays-Bas)
Cyprien Morize (Maitre de Conférence, U-PSud, FAST)
The group was awarded in 2006 of the Price "La Recherche" category Energy : http://www.cnrs.fr/infoslabos/Prix-scientifiques/docs/prix-larecherche.pdf
