H-mode transition and pedestal studies in fusion plasmas

Dr Hendrik Meyer has studied physics at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. After his PhD at the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics he joined UKAEA in 1998, where he started working on the L2H transition fon COMPASS-D and MAST pioneering fast high resolution measurements of the radial electric field. For more than 20 years he has worked on L2H transition studies on many devices (JET, ASDEX Upgrade, NSTX and Alcator C-MOD). Dr Meyer has spearheaded the physics design of the exiting MAST-U device that had recently its 1st campaign. As EUROfusion MST1 Task Force Leader he shaped the EU research on ASDEX Upgrade, MAST-U and TCV. Currently Dr Meyer leads the plasma scenario, control and heating system development in the exciting and ambitious Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) programme within UKAEA  that aims to produce an electricity producing compact prototype power plant by 2040. 

Amanda Hubbard conducted her doctoral research at Imperial College on the JET tokamak, worked in ECE and lower hybrid current drive on the Tokamak de Varennes. She is a Principal Research Scientist at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Throughout the operation of the Alcator C-Mod tokamak, she was responsible for ECE diagnostics and carried out experiments focusing on the pedestal region. Key results included local threshold parameters and dynamics of L-H transitions, EDA H-mode pedestal and fluctuation properties, and most recently studies of the I-mode regime. Following the closure of C-Mod in 2016, her plasma research has been on international tokamaks, including JET and in recent years primarily ASDEX Upgrade, which also accesses I-mode. She has also been active in developing new processes for the fabrication of high temperature superconducting magnets for SPARC. Dr Hubbard is a Fellow of the APS and served as Deputy Director of the US Burning Plasma Organization and on the UK Fusion Advisory Board.  

Professor Patrick H Diamond is an internationally recognised theoretical plasma physicist. His specific research interests relate to areas of plasma and fluid turbulence, transport, dynamo theory, and plasma astrophysics. Professor Diamond has been Principal Investigator of the Fusion and Astrophysical Plasma Physics Group at CASS, UC San Diego, for more than 30 years. He is also Director of the Center for Fusion Theory at the Southwestern Institute of Physics in Chengdu. Professor Diamond has been the primary advisor of more than 33 PhD thesis students and 35 postdoctoral researchers. Professor Diamond earned his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1979. His honors and awards include the European Physical Society's Hannes Alfvén Prize (Plasma Physics Division, 2011; shared with Hasegawa and Mima), and the IAEA Nuclear Fusion Journal Award (2012).

Dr Zheng Yan is an Associate Scientist in the University of Wisconsin – Madison in USA. She received her PhD in the University of California – San Diego. Her major research was performed on DIII-D national fusion facility in San Diego, USA. Her research interests include studying the turbulent transport of particles, energy and momentum across flux surfaces in magnetically confined plasmas during the processes of pedestal formation, L-H transition, etc, and validation of transport simulations through comprehensive experiments, analysis, simulation and comparison. She is an active member of American Physical Society – division of plasmas physics (APS-DPP) and International Tokamak Physics Activity – Transport & Confinement topical group. 

Dr McKee is a Senior Research Scientist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and performs research at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility at General Atomics in San Diego, California. His research focuses on the experimental investigation of turbulence and related instabilities that limit or degrade performance in magnetically confined fusion plasmas, developing advanced optical diagnostics to measure the properties and dynamics of multi-field plasma fluctuations, and comparing measurements to models and simulations. Multiple UW graduate students and post-doctoral researchers are mentored through these programs. He is the Leader of the Burning Plasma Physics group at DIII-D, leads related collaborations at the NSTX-U spherical tokamak facility (PPPL) and the HL-2A tokamak (Southwestern Institute of Physics, Chengdu, China) and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. 

Dr Lothar Schmitz is an experimental physicist with strong interest and research focus in plasma turbulence, self-organisation, and magnetic confinement. He received his MS and PhD degrees from the University of Bochum, Germany, and completed his post-doctoral training at the University of California Los Angeles in basic and applied plasma physics. His present research interests include the physics of the low-to high confinement (L-H) transition, plasma transport in fusion-relevant electron-heat-dominated plasmas, plasma stability and confinement in Field-Reversed Configurations, and transport model validation. He has led the L-H transition topical research area at the DIII-D tokamak, and has launched synergistic experimental and modeling/simulation initiatives involving several toroidal confinement devices. He has also pioneered the development of advanced plasma diagnostics, such as microwave Doppler Backscattering and Correlation Electron Cyclotron Emission, fast reciprocating probes, and techniques based on Laser-Induced Fluorescence, and has significant expertise in plasma edge physics including fluid modeling, development of innovative divertor concepts, and plasma detachment.

Elisabeth Wolfrum completed her diploma studies in technical physics and her doctoral studies at the Technical University in Vienna/Austria and received her doctorate with distinction in 1991 with a thesis on the diagnostics of fusion plasmas. Her postdoc years she spent at the Jülich research center (Germany), the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK) and the University of Oxford, Clarendon Laboratory (UK). In 2000, she took up a position as Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), Garching/Germany, where she has since been working on magnetically confined nuclear fusion plasmas, with a special emphasis on the plasma edge, its diagnostics, its transport and stability. Currently, she leads a research group on plasma edge physics at IPP, lectures at the Technical University in Vienna, and is a member of the board of editors of Nuclear Fusion and a member of the FuseNet Academic Council. 

Yves Martin obtained his PhD degree in 1992 at the EPFL with a thesis the pellet injection into the first tokamak of EPFL, the TCA. He then worked as post-doc at the General Atomics, San Diego, USA. He participated in the exploitation of the Charge Exchange Recombination Spectroscopy on the DIII-D tokamak and wrote a code describing the ion orbit losses. Back in Switzerland, he became an operator of the new tokamak, TCV, of the Swiss Plasma Center of EPFL. In parallel, he studied L-mode to H-mode transitions, in particular the influence of the plasma ape and configuration on the threshold power and on the evolution of the discharge after the transition. He also studied H-mode confinement, including the different ELM regimes achievable when changing the plasma scenarios. Since a few years, he is deputy to the Director, and as such, deals with administrative and technical issues, while participating in the management of the Center.

Bogdan Teaca has obtained his PhD in 2010, jointly, from Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium and University of Craiova, Romania. Postdoctoral researcher at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland between 2010 and 2012 and at Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Garching, Germany in 2013. Affiliate member of Max-Planck/Princeton Center for Plasma Physics from 2013 and Honorary Researcher at University of Craiova, Romania from 2016. His main research interests are related to the physics of turbulence, in both fluid and kinetic plasma, understanding its fundamental nature, developing mathematical and numerical models for practical applications and formulating a theoretical formalism that would be both rigorous and easy to understand.

After obtaining a Physics BSc at Birmingham University ‘80-83, Anthony carried out PhD research through London University at UKAEA’s Culham Laboratory on HBTX-1A Reversed Field Pinch. A post-doctoral position at Max Planck’s IPP Garching followed from ’90-95, working on ASDEX(-U) on spectroscopic studies of H-mode and divertor physics. After a year teaching in NZ, Anthony returned to Culham, where he has worked since on experimental tokamak physics. A beam-emission diagnostic, designed to characterise ion-scale turbulence in MAST, was used for validation of gyrokinetic turbulence simulations, working with students from the Plasma Theory Group at Oxford. Anthony’s most recent studies on JET-ILW have focused on divertor detachment and stability, pedestal heat transport and the influence of W impurity radiation on the performance of ITER-relevant scenarios for high-power DT operation. Anthony has supervised numerous PhD projects and is a Member of Merton College, Oxford. His other interests include sailing and gardening.

Yasmin Andrew is a plasma physicist with over 25 years experience in magnetic confinement fusion research. She received her PhD from Imperial College London, followed by postdoctoral work at University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 2000–2010 she was the Responsible Officer for the Edge Charge Exchange Recombination Spectroscopy diagnostic on the Joint European Torus (JET). Her specialisation is in experimental studies of the L-H transition, the edge or pedestal plasma and the H-mode in present day tokamaks. She has over 100 peer-reviewed publications and presentations in this area. Her current research includes ongoing international collaboration projects on ST40, DIII-D, MAST-U and JET machines. Yasmin Andrew is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and has been active in the energy, women in physics and regional branches and groups.

Eun-jin Kim (Dr, Professor) Dr Kim obtained her BSc in Physics from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, and PhD in Physics from the University of Chicago, USA. She held postdoctoral positions at the Universities of Leeds and Exeter in UK, High-Altitude Observatory in Boulder, USA and University of California, San Diego, USA and was an Associate Professor at the University of Sheffield, UK. Professor Kim is currently a Professor in Physics and Applied Mathematics at Coventry University, UK. She is interested in complexity, self-organisation and non-equilibrium processes, and has a track record in multidisciplinary research, with applications to magnetically confined fusion and astrophysical plasmas and biosystems.