Session

DescriptionMagnetic fusion plasmas are subject to a plethora of collective effects such as electromagnetic waves and instabilities, spanning multiple time- and length- scales. The low collisionality of reactor core plasmas makes a kinetic description mandatory for an accurate representation. Ions and electrons have very different dynamics, and therefore the problem is intrinsically multi-scale, both in space and time. As we go towards the plasma edge, collisionality increases and the relative fluctuation amplitudes become close to unity. In this Part III of the minisymposium, we shall focus on the fact that relying on just porting, and optimizing existing codes on new generation computers will not be sufficient to make a global, full fusion reactor (‘from the magnetic axis to the wall’) description tractable. Ongoing developments in new innovative mathematical representations, discretizations and algorithms are just as critical. Challenges related to transitioning from reduced to more accurate descriptions where needed will also be addressed, in particular considering the possible transition from fluid to gyrokinetic models as well as from gyrokinetic to fully kinetic.