Turbulence ultimately determines the energy confinement time of fusion devices (a very important figure of merit) and is one of the key unsolved physics problems on the path towards a commercial power plant.
First-principles-based numerical simulations, exploiting cutting-edge HPC systems, play a crucial role in understanding the complex processes causing turbulent transport.
They provide one of the most relevant pathways to accelerating the development of fusion power plants. Here, we propose a simulation campaign to address key open questions in turbulent transport usingthe gyrokinetic code GENE (http://genecode.org), which is by far the most widely used such code in the world, both in terms of user base and range of applications.
The team proposes to address the confinement properties of negative triangularity plasmas, which have been shown to hold great promise as a candidate reactor configuration owing to H-mode confinement quality while maintaining relaxed pressure profiles near the edge naturally free of ELMs.
Extrapolating the performance of negative triangularity in future fusion reactor is a compelling open question in fusion science, crucial to determine its true viability for a fusion power plant, and which can only beaddressed with dedicated numerical campaigns using High Performance Computing.
Alberto Mariani, Institute for Plasma Science and Technology, CNR, Milano, Italy - Italy