Research Projects

• Indian tokamak, ADITYA-U, presently employs carbon-based plasma-facing components (PFCs) for both limiter and planned divertor operations. • Carbon has high erosion rates, tritium retention, and dust formation, which are not favourable for long pulse operation. • Tungsten is now considered a leading PFC material due to its high melting point, excellent erosion resistance, and low fuel retention in most of the leading fusion machines. • Previous experiments on ADITYA-U have shown that even low-Z impurities, such as argon, when injected, can significantly alter plasma transport, turbulence, and confinement characteristics. • The effects of high-Z tungsten impurities, especially those introduced through plasma-wall interactions, and the plasma start-up issue with a W wall remain unexplored in ADITYA-U. • To mitigate this, boron coatings are applied to tungsten surfaces in many tokamaks. • We propose to study the plasma start-up, impurity transport and confinement in Aditya-U plasma in the presence of a tungsten limiter. • Additionally, we want to assess the efficacy of Boron coating on it, on the above parameters. This will provide essential data for the planned W-wall operation and in-situ boronization in Aditya-U. • Investigating these effects experimentally and understanding them with simulation codes forms the central objective of the proposed research. • Developing the indigenous G2C3 code to carry out gyrokinetic simulations to study turbulent transport and stability of various modes in tokamak form is the cornerstone of the current project. • Incorporating various machine learning tools within G2C3 to improve efficiency and speed up the code.