Max Parker

In 2024, I completed my integrated masters degree in Physics at the University of Warwick. During this degree I discovered a desire to explore teaching, and so I spent a year as a primary school teaching assistant working with children with special educational needs. This break from academia was meaningful and fulfilling, but strengthened my desire to take a career in research further. I had always found the concept of harnessing fusion power alluring, which informed my decision to join the Fusion CDT as a postgraduate researcher. My project focuses on furthering understanding of the transition between Low and High confinement modes in tokamaks, and is supervised by Prof. Eun-jin Kim.

One of the main challenges in fusion is how to confine plasmas hotter than the Sun here on Earth. The leading concept is the tokamak, in which magnetic fields are used for confinement. Still, transport of heat and particles out of the plasma by turbulence must be minimised. Typically, hotter plasmas have stronger turbulence however; if the input power is increased beyond a critical threshold, it is possible for confinement to spontaneously improve. The states before and after this transition are known as Low and High confinement modes respectively. It is widely accepted that H-mode operation is essential for achieving the performance goals of tokamak-based commercial fusion power plants, so understanding how to achieve it reliably is of critical importance. While a great deal of research has been undertaken to understand the drivers and dynamics of this transition, we still lack a comprehensive, first-principles description of the phenomenon. My project involves analysis of experimental data using novel theoretical frameworks incorporating metrics from the field of information theory. I will also utilise the state-of-the-art global nonlinear gyrokinetic code GYrokinetic SEmi-LAgrangian (GYSELA-X) to simulate turbulent plasmas, with special attention given to the interplay between instabilities at different scales. This work aims to help find a comprehensive description of L-H transitions, which would revolutionise understanding of existing experimental data and inform design and operating principles of tokamak devices going forward.

Email-  parkerm13@uni.coventry.ac.uk

www.linkedin.com/in/max-parker-00416a291

Supervisors

• Prof. Eun-jin Kim