Congratulations to László Horváth, a York Fusion CDT student who successfully defended his thesis at viva in December 2019. László’s thesis is entitled “Isotope dependence of the H-mode pedestal in JET-ILW plasmas ” and his supervisor is Professor Kieran Gibson.  An abstract from László’s thesis is below:

In tokamak H-mode plasmas, the level of energy and particle transport at the plasma edge is reduced and a steep pressure gradient is formed, giving rise to an edge pressure “pedestal”, which positively affects the global energy confinement. A positive isotope mass scaling of the thermal energy confinement time in H-mode plasmas has been observed in several tokamaks, however, this favourable isotope dependence has not yet been fully understood theoretically. The thesis examines the pedestal structure, edge transport, linear MHD stability and inter-ELM edge current evolution in a series of JET-ILW Hydrogen and Deuterium H-mode plasmas with the aim to better understand the isotope dependence of the pedestal and its contribution to the favourable isotope scaling. The analysis of experimental data from JET-ILW and results of interpretative 2D edge transport simulations indicate that the observed favourable isotope scaling of the pedestal cannot be explained by the difference in neutral penetration between Hydrogen and Deuterium, but difference in heat and particle transport also play a role.

Well done László!