The “Ph.D. Student Poster Prize” is awarded to the best poster displayed at the conference by a Ph. The prize is sponsored by the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion (PPCF), the European Physical Society (EPS) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). The competition for this prize is important because a large majority of the PhD students presenting a poster at the conference apply for this prize. The jury is composed of the members of the conference program committee. Samuele Mazzi obtained this prize with his poster “Suppression of ion scale turbulent transport by MeV range fast ions at JET“.

The Itoh Prize, awarded at the same conference, aims at rewarding PhD students who have done excellent research on plasma turbulence, transport, confinement or any other related topic. The competition is judged by a panel of experts chaired by Professor Akihide Fujisawa of Kyushu University. Samuele Mazzi will have the opportunity to visit Kyushu University in Japan for one week, all expenses paid.

During his thesis, which he will defend very soon, Samuele Mazzi analyzed the interaction between the very energetic ions generated by ICRH antennas (up to 2 MeV), which destabilize very high frequency plasma fluctuations called Alfven modes (AE for Alfven Eigenmode), and the turbulent transport driven by ITG (Ion Temperature Gradient) fluctuations. Non-linear gyrokinetic simulations by High Performance Computing (HPC) clearly demonstrate that the thermal ion confinement enhancement obtained at JET under such conditions is due to a multi-scale interaction between AE and ITG, which leads to the suppression of turbulent transport. These results suggest that on ITER, where very energetic alpha particles generated by fusion reactions could destabilize Alfven modes, confinement will not be degraded in the presence of such modes, as suggested in the past, but rather it will be enhanced.

Samuele Mazzi is doing a PhD at PIIM, co-financed by Aix-Marseille University and CEA (INSTN). He is scientifically supervised by Sadruddin Benkadda and David Zarzoso for AMU and CNRS and by Jeronimo Garcia for CEA.