ESFP · Equilibrium and Stability of Flowing Plasmas

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Project objective

The purpose of the project is to study the stability of plasma in astrophysical objects and in nuclear fusion relevant condition in magnetic confinement devices. The first part of the project will involve the modeling of equilibrium properties of the objects under consideration, a necessary step for the stability study. Our work will then focus on macroscopic instabilities that develop in the plasma interior or at the plasma edge.The two key elements that will be considered in the project are macroscopic plasma rotation and non-fluid “kinetic” effects (due to the fact that ions and electrons in a magnetic field are forced to move in helical trajectories, thus behaving very differently from uncharged particles, e.g. molecules in an ordinary fluid).The main contribution of the proposed work to the plasma physics area of research is that rotation and kinetic effects will together and self-consistently. This is in contrast to the common practice, to ignore one or both of them, or to treat them perturbatively. The current understanding is that both effects can change considerably the stability of plasmas, but a complete model is missing.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN · LeuvenCoordinatorBelgium

Links

• View on CORDIS