The overall performance of fusion devices, such as tokamaks, is strongly correlated to the
phenomena that occur in the boundary region, the outer plasma region that faces the wall of the device. The boundary plays a crucial role in regulating the heat and ...
Flux-tube (local) gyrokinetic codes are widely used to simulate drift-wave turbulence in magnetic confinement devices. While a large number of studies show that flux-tube codes provide an excellent approximation for turbulent transport in medium-large devi ...
Nuclear fusion reactor plasmas will need to exhaust a significant proportion of energy flux through radiative processes, to enable acceptable divertor loads. This can be obtained by line radiation from impurities, injected from the plasma edge. There are h ...
Gyrotrons are a class of high-power vacuum-electronics microwave sources, which are envisioned to play an important role in the domain of magnetically confined fusion plasmas. Indeed, only gyrotrons are capable of producing continuous electromagnetic waves ...
The Correlation Electron Cyclotron Emission (CECE) diagnostic at ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) is used to investigate the features of outer core and pedestal (rho(pol) = 0.85-1.0) turbulence across confinement regime transitions. The I-mode confinement regime is a p ...
The JET hybrid scenario has been developed from low plasma current carbon wall discharges to the record-breaking Deuterium-Tritium plasmas obtained in 2021 with the ITER-like Be/W wall. The development started in pure Deuterium with refinement of the plasm ...
This thesis delves into the potential of magnetic fusion energy, and in particular focuses on the stellarator concept. Stellarators use external coils to produce 3-dimensional (3D) magnetic fields that confine a thermonuclear plasma in a topologically toro ...
The largest operating stellarator, Wendelstein 7-X, is of the quasi-isodynamic type. For this design to scale up to a fusion reactor, several criteria must be met, one of them being good fast ion confinement. The latter still has to be tested experimentall ...
Estimation of the dynamic evolution of the electron plasma density during a tokamak discharge is crucial since it directly affects the plasma performance, confinement and stability. Therefore it needs to be monitored and controlled. Knowledge of the densit ...
This thesis presents advancements in the understanding of the plasma conditions leading to the excitation and saturation of the Edge Harmonic Oscillations (EHOs) observed during QH-mode operation in tokamak plasmas. Such operations represent a safer altern ...
Turbulence driven by small-scale instabilities results in strong heat and particle transport, which significantly shortens the confinement time and prevents the formation of a self-sustained plasma reaction in magnetic confinement devices. Control and poss ...
Electron cyclotron wall condition (ECWC) discharges are characterised in ASDEX Upgrade with full tungsten plasma facing components and X2 polarised waves launched from the equatorial ports, relevant to ECWC conditions in ITER Pre-Fusion Power Operation pha ...