The Swiss Plasma Center seeks PhD students throughout the year and encourages candidates to apply at any time. PhD projects are discussed with the prospective thesis supervisor at SPC during the application phase, and can be tuned to the candidate’s interest. A non-exhaustive list of possible projects can be found below.
If you need more information on any proposal, send an e-mail to the corresponding contact person.
If you want to apply, please follow the procedure indicated on this page.
Thank you.
Experimental physics on the TCV tokamak
Experimental physics in the Basic Physics Plasma group
Experimental physics at the BioPlasmas Lab
Open positions in experimental physics on the TCV tokamak
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Optimization of Heating and Current Drive for Scenario development
Contact: Dr. Mario Podestà
The PhD candidate will develop and test heating and current drive (H&CD) schemes to optimize TCV scenarios and to explore their applicability to other tokamaks. A strong interaction with modelers, diagnosticians and control experts, both from SPC and from collaborating institutions, is expected. The candidate will also propose and lead dedicated experiments on TCV, as well as collaborate with the broader TCV team in other ongoing areas of research.
Present and future tokamak rely on external heating and current drive schemes to achieve high performance operations. The TCV tokamak is equipped with H&CD systems based on injection of microwaves in the electron cyclotron (EC) range of frequency and on injection of high-energy neutral beams (NB). Although both methods can provide external heating and current drive, each method results in substantially different H&CD profiles inside the plasma. Depending on the target plasma scenario, the resulting heat absorption and plasma current profiles can affect plasma performance and stability. Understanding and controlling the H&CD profiles is therefore critical for achieving optimum efficiency for a given scenario.
This project focuses on NB physics and predictions/control of the achievable H&CD performance, while retaining a strong connection with ongoing work on EC H&CD on TCV. A common theme among the two schemes is the generation of supra-thermal (or fast) particles that can destabilize plasma instabilities or be indicators of a future plasma disruption. The goal of this project is to test schemes that simultaneously achieve several goals: (i) optimize H&CD performance, (ii) minimize destabilization of plasma instabilities, and (iii) integrate such schemes into the TCV real-time control system (PCS). Goal (iii) implies making additional “signals” available to the TCV PCS, e.g. from existing fast particle diagnostics or by proposing new diagnostics for specific scopes.
Previous experience with fast particle physics and related analysis tools is highly desirable. Basic knowledge of tokamak physics, including the effects on energetic particles on plasma dynamics, is also desirable.
Open positions in experimental physics in the Basic Plasma Physics group
Plasma Physics Theory
- 3D non-linear MHD modelling of tokamak plasma disruptions with the JOREK code
Contact person: Dr Mengdi Kong, Dr. MER Jonathan Graves
Tokamak plasma disruption is one of the crucial questions to be addressed for the safe operation of future large tokamaks like ITER. Accompanied by an abrupt loss of plasma confinement, disruptions could lead to substantial thermal loads, electromagnetic forces and relativistic runaway electrons (REs) that damage the plasma facing components. In view of this, shattered pellet injection (SPI) will be used in ITER’s disruption mitigation system (DMS) to mitigate the detrimental effects.
During SPI, cryogenic pellets are launched and shattered into smaller fragments before being injected into the plasma. Effects of the pellet composition, size and velocity on the material assimilation and radiation properties of SPI have been studied extensively in recent years, including experiments on tokamaks like JET, AUG and DIII-D, as well as numerical modelling using codes with different complexity. Among these, interpretative modelling of experiments helps clarify the complex physics mechanisms at play during disruptions. It also contributes to the validation of the numerical model, an essential step for obtaining reliable predictions for future reactors including ITER.
The proposed PhD thesis focuses on studying the open questions on disruptions with the JOREK code, a 3D non-linear extended MHD code for realistic tokamak geometries. The PhD candidate will start with interpretative modelling of existing JET SPI discharges, for example, those seeded with impurities like neon before the SPI. Depending on the progress, the research can be extended to other machines (including future devices) and/or other topics related to disruptions, such as the chain of events leading to disruptions and/or the dynamics of REs. The proposed thesis will thus involve both numerical modelling and experimental data analyses.
- Simulation of the plasma dynamics at the tokamak edge
Contact person: Prof P. Ricci
The understanding turbulence in the edge of magnetic confinement device is an outstanding open issue in magnetic fusion. The physics of this region determines the boundary conditions of the whole plasma by controlling the plasma refueling, heat losses, and impurity dynamics. Edge dynamics regulates the heat load on the tokamak vessel; this is considered among the most crucial open problems for ITER and future fusion reactors. Since a few years, a project has been initiated at the SPC with the goal of improving the understanding of edge physics. This effort has significantly advanced our grasp of plasma turbulence in the edge of a relatively simple configuration, the circular limited tokamak, and we are now exploring the physics of diverted configurations. Ph.D. theses are proposed with the goal of advancing the simulation and the understanding of edge turbulence in reactor relevant conditions, in particular to consider improved plasma models and advanced exhaust configurations.
Open positions in experimental physics at the BioPlasmas Lab
A virtual tour of the BioPlasmas Lab can be found here:
https://www.epfl.ch/research/domains/swiss-plasma-center/virtual-tours/
The interest in Cold Atmospheric Plasmas (CAPs) is constantly growing for a wide number of applications, from medical treatments, to sterilization of bacteria, viruses, as well as fungii (plasma-agriculture). The high-energy electron population obtained with CAP results in a complex chemistry featuring a variety of Reactive Oxygen and Nitrogen Species (RONS), which have a key role in affecting the biological sample, but keeping a low ambient temperature during the process, thanks to the low energy of ions and atmospheric gas molecules.
At the BioPlamas Lab of the SPC, this interdisciplinary topic where physics, chemistry, and biology are strongly connected is explored on several projects, with a two-fold challenge: on the one hand, CAPs are developed for industrial applications to have a short-medium term impact on the society, on the other hand, the mechanism underlying the biological effects of CAPs is investigated to increase the current understanding of CAP applications, as well as to fine tune the target process.