Having completed my MPhys degree at the University of St Andrews, I am now starting my PhD project at the University of York, partnered with the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE). My work will focus on using Beam Emission Spectroscopy (BES) as a technique for measuring zonal flows in tokamak plasmas, which will be supervised by Dr Istvan Cziegler (UoY) and Dr Anthony Field (CCFE).
Zonal flows are a major component of tokamak turbulence, which causes strong transport of the plasma across the confining field. Despite this, zonal flows are poorly understood, and detailed measurements are still rare. Thus, the development of an accurate zonal flow measurement technique is crucial for understanding tokamak turbulence and ultimately for improving the quality of global plasma confinement. The measurement technique will be developed using the recently upgraded BES system at the upgraded Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST-U) in CCFE.