Steve Biggs-Fox

I am a PhD student on the Fusion CDT programme. My research uses the gyrokinetics code GS2 to investigate plasma microinstabilities in tokamaks. Microinstabilities drive plasma turbulence, which degrades confinement through increased particle and energy transport. Part of my research looks at how the global effects of profile variations can be captured using local models such as that in GS2. The other part of my research looks at how micro-turbulence and large scale zonal flows interact and the consequences of this for turbulent transport. In particular, we are interested in the poloidal distribution of zonal flows drive to inform experimental searches for zonal flows.