The Theory-Experiment interface group is the third pillar for an efficient research development. It is not a “link” in between the Theory group and the Experimental group. It is a research theme in its own right and it has links with both Theory and Experiment groups.
In this context, the “Theory” group means a group dealing with 1st principles physics theories including nonlinear effects in 3D to 5D. Such a group develops complex analytical work and/or complex numerical simulations. The “Experimental” group, on the other hand, develops the tokamak experiment and the diagnostics in order to run complex experiments and to be able to analyse data which have complex interactions.
The “Theory-Experiment” group is yet another group, which uses simplified theories to understand “typical” experimental results. It tries to extract the main (complex) relations in between the plasma sources and profiles that are active in the experiment and that the theory should recover. In this way, the approach to experimental proposals is different from the “Experimental” group since it mainly aims at testing theoretical ideas. Similarly, the approach to theoretical studies is different from the “Theory” group since it mainly aims at understanding the main dependencies observed in the experiment and the effects of the experimental constraints.
An important part of the job of this group is to propose new experiments and not to only test specific theories and models. New models are also to be proposed.