A New UK Fusion Plasma Physics Programme at Warwick University
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Warwick
Department Name: Physics
Abstract
The UK has recently become a net importer of energy. It is recognized that commercial fusion power development will provide an important strategic option for energy supply by mid century. Fusion is uniquely attractive because it does not rely on the conversion of fossil fuels to greenhouse gases, nor give rise to issues associated with the long term storage of nuclear waste. The physical principles underlying thermonuclear fusion in plasmas are also central to the UK's strategic defence science capabilities. The UK is a key stakeholder in the new generation of international fusion plasma research facilities. These include the magnetic confinement facility ITER, supported by six treaty partners: the EU, the USA, Russian Federation, Japan, the People's Republic of China, and the Republic of Korea. The Culham Science Center hosts the world's flagship magnetic fusion facility, JET, together with the pioneering MAST experiment. The UK's defence science needs in this field are met in part by the US National Ignition Facility (NIF, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) and by the new laser facility ORION being initiated at Aldermaston. The UK Government endorses the Fast Track strategy for magnetic confinement fusion power development and is funding the new defence-related facilities.Fusion plasma research is central to the energy, environmental, and defence needs of UK PLC. In addition, contemporary fusion plasma research offers the attractions of a scientific grand challenge, combined with a new generation of advanced large scale international facilities. This proposal seeks to create a new centre of excellence in fusion plasma physics at Warwick, with strong links to the UK magnetic fusion programme at Culham. This will be a step change enhancement that builds on the successful interdisciplinary track record of the Warwick-Culham collaboration, whose work is supported both by EPSRC (primarily through Culham) and by PPARC (primarily through a rolling grant to Warwick). The project will be jointly directed by Prof Sandra Chapman (Warwick) and Prof Richard Dendy (Culham) who have an extensive record of joint scientific and managerial collaboration. To create a new group in fusion plasmas, Warwick would appoint a permanent academic in each of three fields of fusion plasma research: experimental plasma data interpretation and prediction; analytical theory; and computational plasma physics using high performance supercomputing (HPC), linked to the Warwick Centre for Scientific Computing (CSC). The initial scientific focus will be on collisionless, kinetic effects; these are a distinctive feature of fusion plasmas approaching the ignition regime. These appointments are designed to increase UK capacity in this field, and therefore must be attractive internationally as well as nationally. Warwick will therefore in addition undertake to advertise, and subsequently support, these permanent academic posts up to the level of Reader where merited by the quality of the candidate. Each academic will be assisted by two postdocs and a PhD project student. The appointment of up to six postdocs will provide a UK-based career development channel which does not at present exist: this is particularly timely given the recent surge in numbers of high quality UK PhDs in fusion plasma physics. Close engagement with the experimental programme at Culham (MAST and JET) will be developed, and it is expected that some appointees will, for example, participate actively in JET Task Forces.
Publications
Connor J
(2009)
13th EU-US Transport Task Force Workshop on transport in fusion plasmas
in Nuclear Fusion
Watkins N
(2015)
25 Years of Self-organized Criticality: Concepts and Controversies
in Space Science Reviews
Hornsby W
(2010)
A code to solve the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck equation applied to particle transport in magnetic turbulence
in Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
Vorberger J
(2009)
A hydrogen equation of state for ion beam-driven compression experiments
in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical
Militzer B
(2008)
A Massive Core in Jupiter Predicted from First-Principles Simulations
in The Astrophysical Journal
Inglis A
(2008)
A multi-periodic oscillatory event in a solar flare
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Zhu H
(2015)
A quantitative model for heat pulse propagation across large helical device plasmas
in Physics of Plasmas
Sharma A
(2015)
A reanalysis of a strong-flow gyrokinetic formalism
in Physics of Plasmas
Gregori G
(2008)
A reduced coupled-mode description for the electron-ion energy relaxation in dense matter
in EPL (Europhysics Letters)
Poli FM
(2009)
A robust method for measurement of fluctuation parallel wavenumber in laboratory plasmas.
in The Review of scientific instruments
Description | See our International Advisory Panel reports to EPSRC please see the relevant research papers- we continue to actively publish in this area |
Exploitation Route | please see the relevant research papers |
Sectors | Energy Environment Financial Services and Management Consultancy |
Description | We created a new centre for interdisciplinary plasma physics research. The Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics has continued to grow and to facilitate research across laboratory and astrophysical plasmas. Young researchers trained at the Centre have found permanent positions across academia and at the leading facilities for fusion research worldwide, as well as in the mathematical modelling, finance and data analytics sectors. |
First Year Of Impact | 2008 |
Sector | Energy,Environment,Financial Services, and Management Consultancy |
Impact Types | Economic |
Description | A radiation-hydrodynamic ALE code for laser fusion energy |
Amount | £255,109 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/I029117/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2011 |
End | 09/2013 |
Description | Centre for Computational Plasma Physics |
Amount | £326,643 (GBP) |
Funding ID | Contract V30286915 |
Organisation | Atomic Weapons Establishment |
Sector | Private |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 06/2014 |
End | 06/2017 |
Description | Centre for Computational Plasma Physics |
Amount | £264,129 (GBP) |
Organisation | Atomic Weapons Establishment |
Sector | Private |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2017 |
End | 09/2022 |
Description | Enabling Research |
Amount | € 30,000 (EUR) |
Funding ID | TNT |
Organisation | European Atomic Energy Commission (EURATOM) |
Sector | Public |
Country | Belgium |
Start | 01/2017 |
End | 12/2020 |
Description | Enabling Research |
Amount | £11,728 (GBP) |
Organisation | EUROfusion |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2017 |
End | 01/2018 |
Description | Eurofusion MST1 |
Amount | £11,570 (GBP) |
Organisation | EUROfusion |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2017 |
End | 01/2018 |
Description | Extension and optimisation of the EPOCH code |
Amount | £236,478 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/P02212X/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 05/2017 |
End | 05/2019 |
Description | Fulbright-Lloyd's of London Scholarship 2017/18 |
Amount | $60,000 (USD) |
Organisation | US-UK Fulbright Commission |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2017 |
End | 09/2018 |
Description | H2020-PROTEC-2014 |
Amount | € 386,531 (EUR) |
Funding ID | 637302 - PROGRESS |
Organisation | European Commission |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2015 |
End | 12/2017 |
Description | JET campaign 2016 |
Amount | £22,999 (GBP) |
Organisation | EUROfusion |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2016 |
End | 01/2017 |
Description | JET campaign 2017 |
Amount | £23,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | EUROfusion |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2017 |
End | 01/2018 |
Description | JET campaign 2018 |
Amount | £22,999 (GBP) |
Organisation | EUROfusion |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2018 |
End | 01/2019 |
Description | Multi-scale simulations of intense laser-plasma interactions |
Amount | £439,082 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/G054940/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2010 |
End | 03/2014 |
Description | Newton-CONICYT |
Amount | $1,438,000 (CLP) |
Organisation | Newton Fund |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2015 |
End | 10/2016 |
Description | ODIN |
Amount | £255,110 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/I029117/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2011 |
End | 09/2013 |
Description | Standard Grant |
Amount | £422,595 (GBP) |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 06/2012 |
End | 06/2015 |
Title | Field-line map based mesh-free method |
Description | A type of mesh-free element method for representing continuous functions has been found. This can be used in computational simulations of movement and transport in systems with elongated structures. It is particularly appropriate for describing turbulence in tokamaks, especially when the field topology is complicated beyond the X-point. |
Type Of Technology | New/Improved Technique/Technology |
Year Produced | 2017 |
Impact | A user-friendly software implementation of this newly developed software technique is under design: this has not yet been found end-user application. |
Title | Odin |
Description | Odin is a 2D r-z geometry multi-material MHD ALE code. This is maintained on a private gitlab server along with detailed documentation. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2017 |
Impact | This is the first full release of the Odin code but is currently restricted to the development team only. This includes researchers at Exeter, Warwick, Imperial College and York. This release is the first full Odin release which is able to complete simulations of pellet implosion for inertial confinement fusion (ICF). It includes MHD, conduction and a generalised Ohm's law. The ability to begin ICF simulations, albeit with an early release version of the Odin code, is essential for keeping the UK academic community actively involved in international ICF programmes. |
URL | https://cfsa-pmw.warwick.ac.uk/Odin/Odin |
Title | Release of EPOCH code |
Description | Release of the EPOCH particle-in-cell code as a publicly available software package. EPOCH has been developed primarily at the University of Warwick as a multi-purpose plasma simulation code. QED algorithms and code to model gamma-ray and electron-positron pair production were developed at Oxford. Warwick implemented the QED package in the publicly released version of EPOCH. The fully documented code is available at https://cfsa-pmw.warwick.ac.uk/EPOCH/epoch. It is being used by experimentalists and theorists from many countries. This initial release of EPOCH was in 2011 but this is continually updated. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2016 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | The UK is now recognised as a world leading centre for kinetic plasma simulations for laser-plasmas |
URL | https://cfsa-pmw.warwick.ac.uk/EPOCH/epoch |
Description | Electrical wire explosion in water |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Invited Talk at Warm Dense Matter School, Berkeley, California, USA (2008). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
Description | Invited Talk: Int. Conference on Frontiers of Plasma Physics and Technology |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | talk initiated discussions and further collaborations group of presenter is seen as active with influencial results group of presenter is seen as active with influencial results |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
Description | Invited main talk: Annual meeting of the German physical Society |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | talk initiated discussions and further collaborations group of presenter is seen as active with influencial results |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
Description | Invited main talk: European Conference on Laser Interaction with Matter |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | talk initiated discussions and further collaborations group of presenter is seen as active with influencial results |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
Description | Invited talk: EPS Conference on Plasma Physics |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | talk initiated discussions and further collaborations group of presenter is seen as active with influencial results |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
Description | Invited talk: Expert Meeting on Heavy Ion Fusion |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | talk initiated discussions and further collaborations group of presenter is seen as active with influencial results |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2007 |
Description | Invited talk: Int. Conference on Inertial Fusion Science and Applications |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | talk initiated discussions and further collaborations group of presenter is seen as active with influencial results |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2007 |
Description | Momentum conservation law for the Gyrokinetic Vlasov-Poisson equations |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Primary Audience | |
Results and Impact | Round table intervention at Festival de Théorie, Aix-en Provence,France, (2011). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |