A fusion plasma consists of
deuterium, tritium, its fusion product helium and unfortunately also impurities
in form of heavy ions like carbon and tungsten. The parallel dynamics of
the different species are very important to understand ahead of future fusion
reactors; e.g. will heavier ions be left in the outer layer of a fusion reactor
or will they be embedded in the plasma and advected/transported along the
magnetic field lines to the designed place for removing of the exhausted
plasma?
In the absence of collisions, we
do expect kinetic effects to play a role in the dynamics. The project set out
to investigate the kinetic aspect of the transport in the outer layer of a
fusion reactor. But, as electrons have a much smaller mass than ions their
thermal velocities are much faster than ions. Therefore, only the ions are
treated kinetically and electrons are treated either adiabatically or as a
fluid.
In this project, the students
will create a hybrid 1-D particle code, coded in either Python or Matlab. Each
particle act under the influence of a combined electrical field created by all
particles. Based on realistic parameters from the ASDEX Upgrade fusion reactor
and for a wide combination of different ions, the parallel distribution of the
different species should be determined.
Forudsætninger
Knowledge of numerical methods, plasma physics and complex dynamics will be desirable
