Microturbulence studies in RFX-mod

Present-days Reversed Field Pinches (RFPs) are characterized by quasi-laminar magnetic configurations in their core, whose boundaries feature sharp internal transport barriers, in analogy with tokamaks and stellarators. The abatement of magnetic chaos leads to the reduction of associated particle and heat transport along wandering field lines. At the same time, the growth of steep temperature gradients may trigger drift microinstabilities. In this work we summarize the work recently done in the RFP RFX-mod in order to assess the existence and the impact upon transport of such electrostatic and electromagnetic microinstabilities as Ion Temperature Gradient (ITG), Trapped Electron Modes (TEM) and microtearing modes.Comment: Work presented at the 2010 Varenna workshop "Theory of Fusion Plasmas". To appear in Journal of Physics Conference Serie

New gas mixtures suitable for rare event detection using a Micromegas-TPC detector

The aim of the presented work was to develop further techniques based on a Micromegas-TPC, in order to reach a high gas gain with good energy resolution, and to search for gas mixtures suitable for rare event detection. This paper focuses on xenon, which is convenient for the search of neutrinoless double beta decay in 136 Xe. Conversely, a small admixture of xenon to CF 4 can reduce attachment in the latter. This gas mixture would be suitable for dark matter searches and the study of solar and reactor neutrinos. Various configurations of the Micromegas plane were investigated and are described.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, article, revised version with improved figures, text modifications, accepted for publication by JINS

MHD equilibrium and stability of tokamaks and RFP systems with 3D helical cores

Bifurcated magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibrium states are computed for ITER hybrid scenario and RFX-mod SHAx configurations with very flat or reversed core magnetic shear conditions. In the ITER studies, the minimum inverse rotational transform qmin is near unity, while for RFX-mod it is 1/8. Two equilibrium states are obtained: one is axisymmetric, the other displays a 3D helical core. In tokamak devices, the structure resembles a saturated ideal MHD internal kink mode. In the reversed-field pinch, the structure is seven-fold toroidally periodic. The equilibrium magnetic field spectrum in the Boozer coordinate frame is calculated in both the ITER and RFX-mod configurations and the implications are discussed. The RFX-mod equilibria are strongly unstable to external ideal MHD kink modes, which become stabilized with a closely fitting conducting shell when the equilibrium state has a weak reversed core shear. It is marginally unstable with a monotonic q-profile. Unstable modes are driven by the Ohmic current, with pressure and Pfirsch–Schl¨uter currents having a very weak effect. The external kink mode spectrum is dominated by coupled $m = 1$, $n = 6$ and $m = 2$, $n = 13$ Fourier components, which revert to $m = 1$, $n = 8$ and $m = 2$, $n = 15$ terms with a conducting wall in proximity to the plasma–vacuum interface

Development and test of 21 multiplex PCRs composed of SSRs spanning most of the apple genome

A series of 21 multiplex (MP) polymerase chain reactions containing simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers spanning most of the apple genome has been developed. Eighty-eight SSR markers, well distributed over all 17 linkage groups (LGs), have been selected. Eighty-four of them were included in 21 different MPs while four could not be included in any MPs. The 21 MPs were then used to genotype approximately 2,000 DNA samples from the European High-quality Disease-Resistant Apples for a Sustainable agriculture project. Two SSRs (CH01d03 and NZAL08) were discarded at an early stage as they did not produce stable amplifications in the MPs, while the scoring of the multilocus (ML) SSR Hi07d11 and CN44794 was too complex for large-scale genotyping. The testing of the remaining 80 SSRs over a large number of different genotypes allowed: (1) a better estimation of their level of polymorphism; as well as of (2) the size range of the alleles amplified; (3) the identification of additional unmapped loci of some ML SSRs; (4) the development of methods to assign alleles to the different loci of ML SSRs and (5) conditions at which an SSR previously described as ML would amplify alleles of a single locus to be determined. These data resulted in the selection of 75 SSRs out of the 80 that are well suited and recommended for large genotyping project

Magentohydrodynamic Properties of Nominally Axisymmetric Systems with 3D Helical Core

Magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium states with a three-dimensional helical core are computed to model the MAST spherical tokamak and the RFX-mod reversed field pinch. The boundary is fixed as axisymmetric. The MAST equilibrium state has the appearance of an internal kink mode and is obtained under conditions of weak reversed central shear. The RFX-mod equilibrium state has seven-fold periodicity. An ideal magnetohydrodynamic stability analysis reveals that the reversal of the core magnetic shear can stabilize a periodicity-breaking mode that is dominantly m/n = 1/8 strongly coupled to a m/n = 2/15 component, as long as the central rotational transform does not exceed the value of 8