TONUS

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is a large-scale scientific experiment that aims to demonstrate that it is possible to produce energy from fusion. It consists in confining a very hot hydrogen plasma inside a toroidal chamber, called a tokamak. In addition to physics and technology research, tokamak design also requires mathematical modeling and numerical simulations on supercomputers. The objective of the TONUS project is to deal with such mathematical and computing issues. We are mainly interested in kinetic and gyrokinetic simulations of collisionless plasmas. Together with other Inria teams, we also address related subjects: fluid plasma models; collisions; reduced, multiscale and asymptotic models; electromagnetism. We implement our methods in our two software projects: Selalib (Semi-Lagrangian Library) and CLAC (Conservation Laws Approximation on many Cores), adapted to new computer architectures. Finally, the TONUS project-team is at the interaction between mathematics, computer science, High Performance Computing, physics and practical applications.