Publications by Justin Richard Ball

Related publications (28)

Maximizing specific energy by breeding deuterium

Specific energy (i.e. energy per unit mass) is one of the most fundamental and consequential properties of a fuel source. In this work, a systematic study of measured fusion cross-sections is performed to determine which reactions are potentially feasible ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2019

Analysis of edge transport in L-mode negative triangularity TCV discharges

Justin Richard Ball, Sophie Danielle Angelica Gorno

One of the major problems for future tokamak devices are ELMs (Edge Localized Modes) as they can lead to large, uncontrolled heat fluxes at the machine targets. For this reason, different techniques and alternative magnetic configurations are under study t ...

Elsevier2023

Three-dimensional inhomogeneity of electron-temperature-gradient turbulence in the edge of tokamak plasmas

Justin Richard Ball

Nonlinear multiscale gyrokinetic simulations of a Joint European Torus edge pedestal are used to show that electron-temperature-gradient (ETG) turbulence has a rich three-dimensional structure, varying strongly according to the local magnetic-field configu ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2022

Global electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulations of internal transport barriers in reversed-shear tokamaks

Stephan Brunner, Laurent Villard, Moahan Murugappan, Justin Richard Ball, Arnas Volcokas, Philippe Sylvain Stéphane Marie Griveaux, Giovanni Di Giannatale

Internal transport barriers (ITB) form through turbulence suppression, often observed when the safety factor profile exhibits an off-axis minimum. This work aims at improving our understanding of the conditions enabling the development of an ITB, using a m ...

2025

Reducing Turbulent Transport in Tokamaks by Combining Intrinsic Rotation and the Low Momentum Diffusivity Regime

Stephan Brunner, Justin Richard Ball, Haomin Sun

Based on the analysis of a large number of high-fidelity nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations, we propose a novel strategy to improve confinement in spherical tokamak plasmas by combining up-down asymmetric flux surface shaping with the Low Momentum Diffusivi ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2025

Effect of collisions on non-adiabatic electron dynamics in ITG-driven microturbulence

Stephan Brunner, Justin Richard Ball

Non-adiabatic electron response leads to significant changes in ion temperature gradient (ITG) eigenmodes, leading, in particular, to fine-structures that are significantly extended along the magnetic field lines at corresponding mode rational surfaces (MR ...

2021

A non-twisting flux tube for local gyrokinetic simulations

Stephan Brunner, Justin Richard Ball

Local gyrokinetic simulations use a field-aligned domain that twists due to the magnetic shear of the background magnetic equilibrium. However, if the magnetic shear is strong and/or the domain is long, the twist can become so extreme that it fails to prop ...

2021

A synthetic phase-contrast imaging diagnostic with spatial filtering for gyrokinetic simulations

Stephan Brunner, Stefano Coda, Gabriele Merlo, Aylwin Iantchenko, Justin Richard Ball

A Phase-contrast imaging (PCI) diagnostic provides measurements of line-integrated electron density fluctuations. Localisation along the laser beam path can be achieved with a spatial filter that selects the wave-vector directions of the fluctuations contr ...

2023

Reducing transport via extreme flux-surface triangularity

Stefano Coda, Justin Richard Ball

Based on a gyrokinetic analysis of and extrapolation from TCV discharges with large negative and positive triangularity delta, the potential of extreme | delta | in reducing turbulent transport is assessed. Linearly, both positive and negative delta can ex ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2024

Study of fast-ion-driven toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes impacting on the global confinement in TCV L-mode plasmas

Stephan Brunner, Laurent Villard, Stefano Coda, Javier García Hernández, Aylwin Iantchenko, Justin Richard Ball, Matteo Vallar, Umesh Kumar, Oleg Krutkin, Luke Simons, Jesús Poley Sanjuán, Samuele Mazzi, Baruch Rofman

Following recent observations of unstable Toroidal Alfven Eigenmodes (TAEs) in a counter-current Neutral Beam Injection (NBI) scenario developed in TCV, an in-depth analysis of the impact of such modes on the global confinement and performance is carried o ...

2023

Negative triangularity scenarios: from TCV and AUG experiments to DTT predictions

Olivier Sauter, Stefano Coda, Justin Richard Ball, Filippo Bagnato, Matteo Vallar, Alessandro Balestri

Experiments, gyrokinetic simulations and transport predictions were performed to investigate if a negative triangularity (NT) L-mode option for the Divertor Tokamak Test (DTT) full-power scenario would perform similarly to the positive triangularity (PT) H ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2024

Eliminating turbulent self-interaction through the parallel boundary condition in local gyrokinetic simulations

Stephan Brunner, Ajay Chandrarajan Jayalekshmi, Justin Richard Ball

In this work, we highlight an issue that may reduce the accuracy of many local nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations – turbulent self-interaction through the parallel boundary condition. Given a sufficiently long parallel correlation length, individual turbule ...

Cambridge University Press2020

How eigenmode self-interaction affects zonal flows and convergence of tokamak core turbulence with toroidal system size

Stephan Brunner, Julien Stanislas Pierre Dominski, Gabriele Merlo, Ajay Chandrarajan Jayalekshmi, Justin Richard Ball

Self-interaction is the process by which a microinstability eigenmode that is extended along the direction parallel to the magnetic field interacts non-linearly with itself. This effect is particularly significant in gyrokinetic simulations accounting for ...

Cambridge University Press2020

Optimized up-down asymmetry to drive fast intrinsic rotation in tokamaks

Justin Richard Ball

Breaking the up-down symmetry of the tokamak poloidal cross-section can significantly increase the spontaneous rotation due to turbulent momentum transport. In this work, we optimize the shape of flux surfaces with both tilted elongation and tilted triangu ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2018

Development of advanced linearized gyrokinetic collision operators using a moment approach

Paolo Ricci, Baptiste Jimmy Frei, Antoine Cyril David Hoffmann, Rogério Manuel Cabete De Jesus Jorge, Louis Nicolas Stenger, Justin Richard Ball

The derivation and numerical implementation of a linearized version of the gyrokinetic (GK) Coulomb collision operator (Jorge et al., J. Plasma Phys., vol. 85, 2019, 905850604) and of the widely used linearized GK Sugama collision operator (Sugama et al., ...

Cambridge University Press2021

Electromagnetic instability and turbulence in plasmas with positive and negative triangularity

Olivier Sauter, Justin Richard Ball, Matteo Vallar, Reinart Andreas J. Coosemans

While a number of studies exist comparing positive triangularity (PT) and negative triangularity (NT) δ, the nature of how the normalized electron pressure β affects microinstabilities and turbulence in fusion devices with substantial δ has not been studie ...

AIP Publishing2025

Ultra long turbulent eddies, magnetic topology, and the triggering of internal transport barriers in tokamaks

Stephan Brunner, Justin Richard Ball, Arnas Volcokas

Local nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of tokamak plasmas demonstrate that turbulent eddies can extend along magnetic field lines for hundreds of poloidal turns when the magnetic shear is very small. By accurately modeling different field line topologies ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2023

A Quasilinear Model for Momentum Transport Including Rotation and Electron-scale Turbulence

Stephan Brunner, Justin Richard Ball, Haomin Sun

In a previous paper, a new gyrokinetic quasilinear model was proposed to study turbulent momentum transport in tokamaks with up-down asymmetric plasma shaping and toroidal flow shear (Sun et al 2024 Nuclear Fusion 64 036026). In this work, we start by appl ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2025

The effect of background flow shear on gyrokinetic turbulence in the cold ion limit

Stephan Brunner, Ben McMillan, Justin Richard Ball

2019

Physical insights from the aspect ratio dependence of turbulence in negative triangularity plasmas

Stefano Coda, Justin Richard Ball

In this work, we study the impact of aspect ratio A = R 0 / r (the ratio of major radius R 0 to minor radius r) on the confinement benefits of negative triangularity (NT) plasma shaping. We use high-fidelity flux tube gyrokinetic GENE simulations and consi ...

Iop Publishing Ltd2024