Thomas Bristowe

I am from Leicestershire and have a BSc and MSc in physics from the University of Leicester. The title of my PhD project is “Development of advanced tools for molecular collisional-radiative modelling of the tokamak divertor” under the supervision of Andrew Gibson (University of York) and Stefan Mijin (UKAEA).

In magnetically confined fusion (MCF) devices, a substantial amount of heat flux is directed towards the divertor of the tokamak from the plasma. This heat flux is too large for the current materials to withstand for timescales that are acceptable. Therefore, there is a need to decrease this heat flux on the divertor. A possible solution is to have a cloud of neutral particles shield the divertor such that the heat is distributed, by radiation, over a wider wall area. The collisional-radiative model (CRM) is a tool that can simulate the plasma-neutral cloud by modelling the electron-impact collisions and the emission and absorption of electromagnetic radiation. The aim of the project is to model the plasma-neutral cloud by developing new CRM tools by using differentiable programming and data acquisition through a large ensemble of simulations.

Supervisors

• Dr Andrew Gibson