Determining the role of plasma-molecule interactions on Tokamak Power Exhaust

Fusion researchers are now working towards building the world's first nuclear reactor. Many issues remain - one of them being a lack of a complete understanding of the plasma chemistry in the divertor region of the tokamak. A thorough understanding of the gaseous processes within the tokamak region is crucial to a working tokamak as modern magnetic tokamak configurations lead to large point heat loads in the divertor region and chemical processes within the divertor region dissipate this heat.
We can obtain spectroscopic balmer and fulcher line data from the divertor. However, we need a model of the processes informed by chemistry to be able to meaningfully plot this data. Bayesian mathematics can be used to provide this chemical model.
This PHD project aims to use the balmer and fulcher line data provided by experiments at Culham to develop a better chemical model. When a better chemical model has been developed, the code, SOLPS, used to predict physical processes within the Scrape Off Layer of the tokamak which is linked magnetically and thermally to the divertor will be updated.