Group

Amazing Experience at IPP Summer University for Plasma Physics and Fusion Research

Yet another year, the Max Plank Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) has hosted a Summer University at the heart of their facilities at Garching, near the German city of Munich. From 16 to 20 September, the course has covered the main aspects of plasma physics with emphasis on nuclear fusion, both theoretical and experimental results, and also boarding the subjects of energy production and the energetic challenges the close future holds.

One of our group members, Jordi Manyer, has had the privilege and pleasure to attend the summer school, taking place this week, and soak the knowledge some of the top researchers in IPP have to offer.

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Our recent Nuclear Fusion journal paper on the modelling of ASDEX Upgrade tokamak plasmas

View from the ASDEX Upgrade Control Room.

Our journal article entitled “Shear Alfvén wave continuum spectrum with bifurcated helical core equilibria” has been published in the peer-reviewed Nuclear Fusion journal. Jointly published by IAEA and IOP Publishing, Nuclear Fusion is one of the renowned journals specializing in fusion plasmas.

The paper reports on the first modelling results aimed at understanding low-frequency Alfvén eigenmodes called beta induced Alfvén eigenmodes (BAEs) observed during monster sawtooth crashes in ASDEX Upgrade tokamak plasmas and their comparison with the experimental observations.

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Experience of a summer intern at our group


Since the 25 of June until the 6 of September I was one of the two students that participated in the International Summer HPC Internship Programme at Fusion group in Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). We were already presented in an earlier post entitled New summer interns at BSC Fusion Group. Among the two of us, I am Adam Teixidó, and in this post I will relate my experience, which I enjoyed.

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Our four recent journal publications on JET results in Nuclear Fusion

Sample Nuclear Fusion journal.

Two members of our fusion group, Mervi Mantsinen and Dani Gallart, have collaborated in four recent peer-reviewed journal papers that has been recently published in Nuclear Fusion.

Nuclear Fusion is the acknowledged world-leading journal specializing in fusion. The journal covers all aspects of research, theoretical and practical, relevant to controlled thermonuclear fusion, and enjoys a high impact factor of 3.516 (2018).

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Collaborating with CIEMAT and Aalto University on modelling of fast ions in TJ-II stellarator

Sadig Mulas (left) and Joona Kontula (right) at MareNostrum4.

From 22 July to 2 August, we enjoyed the visits of two PhD students, Sadig Mulas and Joona Kontula from CIEMAT and Aalto University, respectively, to our group. Sadig and Joona came to work with us within the collaboration between the three institutions (CIEMAT – Aalto University – BSC) on numerical modelling of fast ions in the TJ-II stellarator. The TJ-II stellarator is an experimental fusion device is located at the CIEMAT headquarters in Madrid, Spain, which uses fast ions injected by neutral beam injection to heat the plasma.

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Experiments in full swing on Joint European Torus

Control room experimental team following attentively the various displays showing measured key quantities in real time during one of the M18-05 experimental discharges carried out last Thursday.

The EUROfusion experimental campaign at the Joint European Torus (JET) located at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), UK is in full swing.

Last week our group leader Mervi Mantsinen and our La Caixa-funded PhD student Dani Gallart visited JET to participate in this campaign. Our focus was in on-site preparation, execution and first analysis of two sessions of the experiment M18-05 “ICRH scenario support in D and T plasmas” for which Mervi is one of the two scientific coordinators. This means that she is in charge of the scientific planning of this experiment and the coordination of its international team of approximately 45 scientists from various institutions all over Europe.

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