Research

 

 

The research carried out by the Group, active both in theory and experiments, refers to: basic physical processes in plasmas, non-neutral plasmas, plasmas relevant to controlled fusion. Most of the work is carried out within national and international collaborations. The research on non-neutral plasmas was sponsored in the past by MIUR and INFM  (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica della Materia) and  since 2002 it has been supported by INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), with the Experiments ELETRASP (2002-2005), ELTEST (2006-2009) and ELEBEAM (2010-2012), Coolbeam (2013-2015), Beam4fusion (2013-12016), Plasma4beam (2017-2019), Ion2neutral (2020-).

Main topics:

-   Experimental and theoretical study of the dynamics of: i) one-component plasmas, confined in a Malmberg-Penning trap (ELTRAP); and ii) low energy electron beams.

-    Chaos and coherent structures in plasmas and fluids.

-  Development of Vlasov and particle-in-cell numerical simulation codes for the analysis of the dynamics of plasmas, fluids and charged particle beams.

-  Complex plasmas: theory and simulation of dusty plasma dynamics, design of production and confinement machines.

-  Thermonuclear plasmas: electron cyclotro resonance heating and current drive.