Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme
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P: Fachverband Plasmaphysik
P 16: Poster Session Plasma Physics
P 16.84: Poster
Thursday, March 19, 2026, 13:45–15:45, Redoutensaal
The avalanche source for a 3D particle in cell model of runaway electrons — •Fiona Wouters1, Matthias Hoelzl1, Hannes Bergstroem1, Guido Huijsmans2,3, and Jan van Dijk2 — 1Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Boltzmannstraße 2, 85748 Garching, Germany — 2Eindhoven University of Technology, Groene Loper 3, 5612 AE Eindhoven, the Netherlands — 3CEA, IRFM, 13115 Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France
Disruptions, i.e. major instabilities in which plasma confinement is lost, are a significant threat to tokamak operation not only because of the large in vessel forces involved, but also because they may lead to the acceleration of some electrons to relativistic speeds. These so-called runaway electrons (REs) can exponentially multiply due to large-angle collisions with thermal electrons during the RE avalanche. As the RE avalanche is exponentially sensitive to the pre-disruption plasma current, this can lead to multi-MA RE beams in large future devices, which may cause severe localized wall damage. Therefore, simulations including the RE sources in realistic 3D fields are needed to further the understanding of RE generation and losses and develop viable mitigation scenarios. For this purpose 3D nonlinear MHD code JOREK contains a hybrid fluid-kinetic model that describes the REs with a full-f relativistic particle in cell (PiC) approach using either full-orbit or drift kinetic RE descriptions. We present the implementation of the relativistic large-angle collision operator and a resampling technique needed to limit the number of markers, along with first applications.
Keywords: Runaway electrons; Runaway avalanche; Disruptions; Particle in Cell; Collisions