Abstract of GYGLES Project

It is believed that shear Alfvén waves (SAW) destabilized by fast (fusion-born) particles will play an important role in burning plasmas such as those expected in ITER. These instabilities may lead to a severe power losses and heat loads on the first wall but, on the other hand, they may become useful for diagnostic purposes (MHD spectroscopy) and can possibly be used to transfer the fusion energy directly into ions without the intermediate step of slowing-down on the electrons (alpha channelling). Low-mode current-driven instabilities (tearing and kink modes) can play and important role in tokamak disruptions and sawteeth. Numerical modelling is crucially important to understand these instabilities and the associated physics. Gyrokinetics is a first principle based theory and is well suited to describe the relevant physics. An established and flexible method for solving the gyrokinetic system of equations is the simulation via the particle-in-cell (PIC) method. Electromagnetic gyrokinetic PIC simulations require particularly high numerical resolution both in phase space (number of markers) and in real space (grid size). HPC-FF makes it possible to perform the simulations of Alfvén modes in ITER-relevant configurations.