Responsable: Manuel García Muñoz
Tipo de Proyecto/Ayuda: 7º Programa Marco de la U.E.
Referencia: 321455
Web: http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/104198_en.html
Fecha de Inicio: 01-09-2012
Fecha de Finalización: 31-08-2016

Empresa/Organismo financiador/es:

• Comisión Europea

Contratados:

• Técnicos/Personal Administrativo:
  • Joaquín Galdón Quiroga

Resumen del proyecto:

Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities are ubiquitous in laboratory as well as in astrophysical plasmas. Their interplay with energetic (suprathermal) ions is of crucial importance to understand the energy and particle exchange in astrophysical plasmas as well as to obtain a viable energy source in magnetically confined fusion devices such as ITER. Experimentally, a detailed knowledge of the wave-particle interaction can be gained from direct measurements of MHD induced fast-ion losses in fusion plasmas. The principal diagnostics to obtain this information in a magnetic fusion device are scintillator based fast-ion loss detectors (FILD) that are located at the plasma edge. A scintillator based FILD acts as a magnetic spectrometer, dispersing the measured escaping fast-ions onto a scintillator, with the strike points depending on their gyroradius (energy) and pitch angle (angle between ion velocity and magnetic field line), thus, giving the full information of the velocity space of the escaping ions at the detector position.

The research lines proposed here for the next years aim at gaining a better understanding of the energetic particle acceleration / transport mechanisms induced by MHD fluctuations through innovative diagnosis techniques developed at CNA (Centro Nacional de Aceleradores) and employed in large fusion devices. We plan to exploit the CNA low-energy particle accelerators to develop and calibrated fusion-relevant charged particle detectors as well as to explore new techniques. New radiation hardness scintillator materials with high efficiency against fusion-relevant charged particles and short decay time will be developed and characterized. A natural result of this activity will be a flexible Ion Beam Analysis (IBA) chamber for fusion technology installed at the CNA Tandem and Cyclotron with equipment suited for ionoluminescence (material/photonic) studies, a facility unique in Spain and rare in Europe.