Missions

The present offer, for which Aix-Marseille University will be the employer, takes place in the frame of the SF-PLANT project of PEPR SupraFusion which aims at assessing the impact of high temperature superconductors in the design of fusion power plants.
The prediction of plasma confinement in future power plants rely on experimentally inferred scaling laws. These scaling laws give the energy confinement time as a function of engineering parameters like for instance the toroidal magnetic field, plasma current or heating power. The experimental correlations between some of these engineering parameters prevents a clear separation of their impact in scaling laws. In addition, the operating regime of future power plants is far beyond that of existing devices requiring to extrapolate the predictions with large associated uncertainties.
Recently, tokamak simulations have been shown to recover the basic dependencies of the energy confinement time on plasma current and magnetic field, performing even better than scaling laws. This opens an extremely interesting avenue where tokamak simulations (integrated modelling) can be used to better understand the dependencies obtained in scaling laws and better constrain them beyond the existing experimental space. This is the goal of the present project.

Activities

The first part of the project will consist in the validation of the modelling tools against experimental observations. This will be achieved by performing tokamak simulations with the High Fidelity Pulse Simulator used for integrated modelling at ITER and Eurofusion. Experimental cases from the tokamaks ASDEX Upgrade (Germany) and WEST (France) will be selected to investigate the dependence of confinement time on the aspect ratio. This study will then be extended to plasmas from the TCV and DIII-D tokamaks to investigate the dependence of confinement on plasma triangularity.
Based on these validated simulations, the physical mechanisms responsible for the observed scalings will be investigated, paying special attention to the role of sheared flows, and refined scaling laws, including triangularity dependence and decoupling aspect ratio and elongation, will be proposed.

Skills

Extended knowledge of magnetised plasma physics (PhD), ideally in the context of tokamak plasmas. Experience in integrated modelling simulations would help.
Experience in numerics: use of parallelised codes, programming (Fortran/C), use of analysis tools like Matlab or Python

Work Context

The candidate will join the « Plasma Theory and Modelisation » team of the PIIM Laboratory at Aix-Marseille University. Since the 90's, the PIIM laboratory contributes to magnetic fusion plasma research. The PTM team is particularly active in this field with numerous collaborations at the regional (IRFM, CEA Cadarache), national (Fédération Française de Fusion par Confinement Magnétique), European (Eurofusion) and international (Japan, Brasil, US) level. The team is very visible internationally with regular invited contributions to the main plasma physics conferences.

The position is located in a sector under the protection of scientific and technical potential (PPST), and therefore requires, in accordance with the regulations, that your arrival is authorized by the competent authority of the MESR.