Andrew Jackson

Durham University

I completed a 5 year integrated Masters in Physics at the University of St. Andrews and a 1 year Masters in Fusion Energy at the University of York before entering the CDT program. My PhD is focussed on the Fast-Ion Deuterium-Alpha (FIDA) diagnostic for the MAST-U tokamak. This techniques can be used to measure how the distributions of fast ions within a tokamak evolve in both configuration space and velocity space. One reason that this is important is that energetic alpha particles produced by the fusion reaction are required to be confined in order to heat the plasma to thermonuclear temperatures. The project will involve the operation and interpretation of data from the diagnostic, with investigation of further improvements that could be made.