Assistant Professor and Zinkle Fellow Livia Casali recently had a paper published in the research journal IOPscience as part of the plasma physics and controlled fusion special issue on negative triangularity.
The paper, “Achievement of highly radiating plasmas in negative triangularity and effect of reactor-relevant seeded impurities on confinement and transport,” presents the first demonstration of highly radiating plasmas in strongly shaped negative triangularity plasmas. It represents years of effort designing, executing, and analyzing experiments at high radiation fractions obtained with reactor-relevant seeded gasses.
Among the key highlights from the paper are:
- High performance at high radiation fraction, with no edge-localized modes (ELMs);
- Significant reduction in divertor heat flux;
- Confinement improvement driven by impurity seeding, supported by a robust and reproducible physics mechanism across multiple impurity species.
“This is a really big deal, because it’s the first time we have demonstrated this,” Casali said. “These findings mark a critical step toward assessing the viability of the negative triangularity path as a potential operational regime for reactors. They directly address the core-edge integration challenge—a key hurdle in the development of fusion reactors.”
Casali performed the experiments for the paper with TCE students Austin Welsh and Ray Mattes, together with the DIII_D Team at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego.
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, rpotkey@utk.edu)