School of Physics, Engineering and Technology
Wave-particle resonance
Contact people: Roddy Vann & Ben Woods (PhD student)
Some superthermal particles are moving sufficiently quickly that they can resonantly interact with plasma waves such as the toroidal Alfvén eigenmode (TAE). This resonant interaction can lead to a transfer of energy from the particles to the wave, which can then act to transport the fast particles away from the plasma core where they’re needed. More optimistically, it is conceivable that this wave-particle interaction might lead to a mechanism for the alpha particles to heat the fuel ions directly (without also heating the electrons) – such a technique could dramatically improve reactor performance. At the York Plasma Institute, we are applying a family of wave-particle interaction models to understand the fundamental science underlying this process and gain a qualitative understanding of its impact on tokamak performance. We are particularly interested in the problem of resonant interaction across an intermediate number of modes and the transition to the quasilinear regime.