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Fusion is potentially an inexhaustible energy source whose exploitation requires basic understanding of high-temperature plasmas. The development of a science-based predictive capability for fusion-relevant plasmas is a challenge central to fusion energy science, in which numerical modeling has played a vital role for more than four decades.
The program in Theory and Simulation of Fusion Plasmas at General Atomics supports the DOE's goals of advancing fundamental understanding of plasmas, resolving outstanding scientific issues and establishing reduced-cost paths to more attractive fusion energy systems, and advancing understanding and innovation in high-performance plasmas including burning plasmas.
The program in advanced computer science techniques supports the same goal through the application of a wide variety of technologies including Grid Computing, Parallel Computing, Advanced Collaborative Environments, Large-Scale Data Management, Scientific Visualization, and Tiled Display Walls.
Announcements
- Theory Group Program Report for Grant Year 2005-2007
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- Marshall Rosenbluth Award
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Weekly Highlights
The drift-kinetic neoclassical code NEO has been upgraded to include the effects of rapid toroidal rotation, which is believed to play an important role in explaining enhanced confinement phenomena, such as the formation of transport barriers. The new formulation, which is based on the theory of Hinton and Wong (PoP 1985, vol 28, p.3082), generalizes the standard neoclassical theory that assumes the diamagnetic ordering, to allow for flow speeds of arbitrary size. Successfully benchmarks of the ion energy flux and momentum flux with analytical theory have been done for the case of a single ion species with adiabatic electrons in the banana regime of collisionality, including the rotation shear. Studies of the neoclassical transport of impure rotating plasmas are in progress.
C. Holland attended the "Multiscale methods for fluid and plasma turbulence: Applications to magnetically confined plasmas in fusion devices'" workshop organized by M. Farge and K. Schneider at the Centre International de Rencontres Mathematiques in Marseille, France, April 21 to 25, where he gave an invited talk titled "Validation of Nonlinear Transport Codes for Core Tokamak Turbulence: Current Status and Future Directions."
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