The European framework
EUROfusion's mission is to pave the way for fusion power reactors. To do so, the consortium funds the research at 29 of its members (in 25 EU member states, Ukraine and Switzerland) on the basis of the European Research Roadmap to the Realisation of Fusion Energy as a joint programme within Euratom Horizon Europe.
IAC activities
Our Institute contributes to the modelling and data analysis in several different topics and machines, such as the study of electron interactions in the core of magnetically confined plasmas, with particular attention to how these processes evolve as energy increases, though the study of the time evolution of the electron energy distribution function; or the studies and the high beta regimes for future reactors.
To this end, we develop dedicated code for the analysis of experimental data collected in machines with different characteristics. The implementation of models for the calculation of the magnetic equilibrium and of flux coordinates makes it possible to bring measurements from different devices onto a common basis, so that they can be compared and exploited systematically.
One of the other lines of activity is the investigation of high-β regimes, in which the plasma pressure is high relative to the confining magnetic pressure. Such regimes are of direct interest for future reactors, since a higher β means more fusion power for a given magnetic field, and they are therefore a key ingredient in the development and assessment of reactor-relevant operating scenarios.
Outlook
The work is directed along different lines. One is the development of models describing perturbations of the electron energy distribution function under non-equilibrium conditions. another is the calculation of solutions of the electron kinetic equation, adopting the Fokker-Planck operator to describe collisions between particles.
