Professor
of Physics and Astronomy University
of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA Tel: 949-824-2717; Email: zhihongl@uci.edu |
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I study the physics of high temperature plasma, the
fourth state of matter, which constitutes 99 percent of the visible universe. Plasma
physics is the scientific foundation for fusion energy, which powers the stars
such as the Sun and promises for an environmentally clean and unlimited energy
source for the humanity. I use advanced simulations on the world’s fastest
supercomputers to study turbulent transport, which is one of the most important
scientific challenges in burning plasma experiment ITER, the crucial next step in the quest for
the fusion energy and the biggest international science collaboration
involving US, EU, China, India, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. International collaboration plays a vital role in
fusion simulations in support of ITER.
Because of the cross-disciplinary nature, fusion
simulations in US have consolidated into night multi-institutional projects in
the US Department of Energy (DOE) Scientific Discovery through Advanced
Computing (SciDAC)
initiative. I lead the Center for Integrated Simulation of Energetic Particles
(ISEP), a consortium of the University of California, Irvine (UCI), General
Atomics (GA), and national laboratories PPPL, ORNL, LLNL, LBNL, Princeton
University (PU), and UCSD. The confinement of energetic particles is a
critical issue for ITER burning plasmas because the ignition relies on the
self-heating by energetic fusion products (α-particles).
I lead a DOE INCITE
project, which has been awarded for 2% of the computing time on the Summit
computer at ORNL, which is the world’s fastest supercomputer with a speed of
200PF (i.e., performing 2x1017 calculations for second). Our
flagship fusion code GTC has been
optimized on the GPU-based Summit by the Center for Accelerated Application
Readiness (CAAR), a consortium of
UCI, PU, ORNL, and hardware vendors NVDIA and IBM.
GTC has been developed jointly by a collaborative
team including my group at UCI and collaborators in the ITER partnership, and
extensively utilized to simulate fusion experiments including DIII-D, JET, EAST, KSTAR, & HL-2A tokamaks, W7-X
& LHD
stellarators, and C2-W field-reversed configuration. These
first-principles massively parallel simulations and associated theory have led
to physics discovery in turbulence
self-regulation by zonal flows, zonal flow damping, neoclassical transport,
transport scaling, wave-particle decorrelation,
energetic particle
transport, electron
transport, nonlinear
dynamics of Alfven eigenmodes, localization of Alfven
eigenmodes, driftwave stability, transport bifurcation
in fusion plasmas.
Selected
Recent Publications:
·
Effects of RMP-Induced Changes of Radial Electric
Fields on Microturbulence in DIII-D Pedestal Top,
S. Taimourzadeh, L. Shi, Z. Lin, R. Nazikian, I. Holod, D. Spong, Nuclear Fusion
59, 046005 (2019).
·
Nonlinear Saturation of Kinetic Ballooning Modes by Zonal
Fields in Toroidal Plasmas, G.
Dong, J. Bao, A. Bhattacharjee, and Z. Lin, Phys. Plasmas
26, 010701 (2019).
·
Gyrokinetic simulations of Toroidal Alfven Eigenmodes
excited by energetic ions and external antennas on the Joint European Torus,
V. Aslanyan, S. Taimourzadeh, L. Shi, Z. Lin, G. Dong, P. Puglia, M. Porkolab,
R. Dumont, S. E. Sharapov, J. Mailloux, M. Tsalas, M. Maslov, A. Whitehead,
R. Scannell, S. Gerasimov,
S. Dorling, S. Dowson, H. K. Sheikh, T. Blackman, G. Jones, A. Goodyear, K. K.
Kirov, P. Blanchard, A. Fasoli, D. Testa, and JET Contributors, Nuclear Fusion 59,
026008 (2019).
·
Simulation of toroidicity-induced Alfven eigenmode
excited by energetic ions in HL-2A tokamak plasmas,
Hongda He, Junyi Cheng, J. Q. Dong, Wenlu Zhang, Chenxi Zhang, Jinxia Zhu, Ruirui Ma, T. Xie, G. Z. Hao, A. P. Sun, G. Y. Zheng, W.
Chen and Z. Lin, Nuclear Fusion 58, 126023 (2018).
·
A conservative scheme for
electromagnetic simulation of magnetized plasmas with kinetic electrons,
J. Bao, Z. Lin, and Z. X. Lu, Phys.
Plasmas 25, 022515 (2018).
·
Particle simulation of radio frequency waves with
fully-kinetic ions and gyrokinetic electrons,
Jingbo Lin, Wenlu Zhang, Pengfei Liu, Zhihong Lin, Chao Dong, Jintao Cao, and
Ding Li, Nuclear Fusion
58, 016024 (2018).
·
A conservative scheme of drift kinetic electrons for
gyrokinetic simulation of kinetic-MHD processes in toroidal plasmas,
J. Bao, D. Liu, Z. Lin, Phys. Plasmas
24, 102516 (2017).
·
A closed high-frequency Vlasov-Maxwell simulation model
in toroidal geometry, Pengfei Liu, Wenlu Zhang,
Chao Dong, Jingbo Lin, Zhihong Lin, and Jintao Cao, Nuclear
Fusion 57,
126011 (2017).
·
Excitation of Low Frequency Alfven Eigenmodes in
Toroidal Plasmas, Yaqi Liu, Zhihong Lin, Huasen Zhang, Wenlu
Zhang, Nuclear Fusion 57, 114001 (2017).
·
Gyrokinetic particle simulations of the effects of
compressional magnetic perturbations on drift-Alfvenic
instabilities in tokamaks, Ge
Dong, Jian Bao, Amitava Bhattacharjee, Alain Brizard, Zhihong Lin, and Peter
Porazik, Phys. Plasmas 24, 081205 (2017).
·
Drift-wave Stabilities in the Field-Reversed Configuration, C. K. Lau, D. P. Fulton, I. Holod,
Z. Lin, M. Binderbauer, T. Tajima, and L. Schmitz,
Phys. Plasmas 24, 082512 (2017).
·
New Paradigm for Turbulent Transport Across a Steep
Gradient in Toroidal Plasmas, H. S.
Xie, Y. Xiao, and Z. Lin, Phys. Rev. Lett.
118, 095001 (2017).
·
Effects of Magnetic Islands on Bootstrap Current in
Toroidal Plasmas, G. Dong, Z. Lin, Nuclear
Fusion 57,
036009 (2017).
·
Effects of Resonant Magnetic Perturbations on
Microturbulence in DIII-D Pedestal, I. Holod, Z. Lin, S. Taimourzadeh, R.
Nazikian, D. Spong, and A. Wingen, Nuclear
Fusion 57, 016005 (2017).