Fusion, Plasma Turbulence and Computational Challenge

The Oxford e-Research Centre is pleased to welcome Colin Roach from Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. He will present a seminar entitled ‘Fusion, Plasma Turbulence and Computational Challenge’

The achievement of terrestrial fusion energy production requires the confinement of extremely high temperature plasmas, and magnetically confined fusion experiments have made considerable progress towards this goal. It is increasingly well understood that plasma confinement in such devices is limited by small scale turbulent fluctuations in the properties of the plasma and the associated electric and magnetic fields. This talk will outline the gyrokinetic model that was developed to describe plasma turbulence, and some of the valuable insights that have been gained from simulations. Modelling plasma turbulence is associated with considerable computational challenges, and this aspect will also be discussed.