Publications by Laurent Villard

Particle-in-cell methods in edge plasma physics: the PICLS code

Stephan Brunner, Laurent Villard, Giovanni Di Giannatale

Over the past decades, multiple gyrokinetic codes have shown to be able to simulate turbulence and associated transport in the core of Tokamak devices. However, their application to the edge and scrape-off layer (SOL) region presents significant challenges ...

2025

Collisional effects on positive and negative triangularity through local and global temperature gradient-driven and flux-driven gyrokinetic simulations

Stephan Brunner, Laurent Villard, Moahan Murugappan, Giovanni Di Giannatale

In this work, we explore the effects of collisions on turbulent transport, focusing on two different TCV magnetic equilibria featuring positive and negative triangularity. The investigation is conducted using gyrokinetic modeling. Both gradient-driven and ...

2025

Global electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulations of internal transport barriers in reversed-shear tokamaks

Stephan Brunner, Laurent Villard, Moahan Murugappan, Justin Richard Ball, Arnas Volcokas, Giovanni Di Giannatale

Internal transport barriers (ITB) form through turbulence suppression, often observed when the safety factor profile exhibits an off-axis minimum. This work aims at improving our understanding of the conditions enabling the development of an ITB, using a m ...

2025

Gyrokinetic transport driven by ubiquitous modes in LTX-like tokamak with ‘flat’ temperature

Laurent Villard, Emmanuel Lanti

A global, gyro-kinetic nonlinear study of the ubiquitous mode (UM) for Lithium Tokamak eXperiment (LTX)-like profiles, under flat electron and ion temperature scenarios is conducted using a global gyrokinetic model. Exact MHD equilibria with circular shape ...

2025

Verification of the Picls Electromagnetic Upgrade in Mixed Variables

Laurent Villard

The gyrokinetic particle-in-cell code PICLS is a full-f finite element tool to simulate turbulence in open and closed field lines. During the previous year, the capability of PICLS was extended to encompass electromagnetic effects. Successful tests using t ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2025

Verification of the Fourier-enhanced 3D finite element Poisson solver of the gyrokinetic full-f code PICLS

Stephan Brunner, Laurent Villard, Alberto Bottino, Moahan Murugappan

We introduce and derive the Fourier -enhanced 3D electrostatic field solver of the gyrokinetic full -f PIC code PICLS. The solver makes use of a Fourier representation in one periodic direction of the domain to make the solving of the system easily paralle ...

Elsevier2024

Ion temperature gradient mode mitigation by energetic particles, mediated by forced-driven zonal flows

Laurent Villard, Giovanni Di Giannatale, Baruch Rofman

In this work, we use the global electromagnetic and electrostatic gyro kinetic approaches to investigate the effects of zonal flows forced-driven by Alfvén modes due to their excitation by energetic particles on the dynamics of ITG (ion temperature gradien ...

American Institute of Physics (AIP)2024

Global gyrokinetic study of density gradient driven instability in tokamaks: the ubiquitous mode

Laurent Villard

The ubiquitous mode is investigated in the linear regime for the first time using a global gyrokinetic model. These modes are driven by the density gradient in trapped electron population but with mode frequency in the ion diamagnetic drift direction, in c ...

2024

Magnetic shaping effects on turbulence in ADITYA-U tokamak

Laurent Villard, Emmanuel Lanti

The work reported in this paper addresses two aspects. In the first part, numerical simulations are conducted to examine the impact of magnetic equilibrium shaping (elongation and triangularity), on both conventional Ion Temperature Gradient (ITG) modes an ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2024

Gyrokinetic flux-driven simulations in mixed TEM/ITG regime using a delta-f PIC scheme with evolving background

Stephan Brunner, Laurent Villard, Moahan Murugappan, Giovanni Di Giannatale

In the context of global gyrokinetic simulations of turbulence using a particle-in-cell framework, verifying the delta-f assumption with a fixed background distribution becomes challenging when determining quasi-steady state profiles corresponding to given ...

American Institute of Physics (AIP)2024

System size scaling of triangularity effects on global temperature gradient-driven gyrokinetic simulations

Stephan Brunner, Laurent Villard, Moahan Murugappan, Giovanni Di Giannatale

In this work, we explore the triangularity effects on turbulent transport employing global gyrokinetic simulations performed with the ORB5 code. Numerous experiments on the Tokamak á Configuration Variable (TCV) and, more recently, on the DIII-D machine, h ...

2024

Experimental and numerical investigations of electron transport enhancement by electron-cyclotron plasma-wave interaction in tokamaks

Laurent Villard, Stefano Coda, Laurie Porte, Joan Decker, Aylwin Iantchenko, Jean Arthur Cazabonne, Giovanni Di Giannatale

Energy transfer from electron-cyclotron (EC) waves to the plasma is being routinely used in tokamaks to heat and drive current through the electron channel. Technical applications such as magnetohydrodynamic mode mitigation require power deposition with a ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2023

Nonlinear dynamics of nonadiabatic chirping-frequency Alfven modes in tokamak plasmas

Laurent Villard

Frequency chirping of Alfven modes, a phenomenon observed in tokamak fusion plasmas driven by energetic particles (EPs), can result in significant losses of EPs. In this study, we use the global gyrokinetic code ORB5 (Lanti et al 2020 Comput. Phys. Commun. ...

2023

Numerical tools for burning plasmas

Laurent Villard, Alberto Bottino, Jonathan Graves, Ben McMillan, Emmanuel Lanti, Emanuele Poli, Xiao Wang, Baruch Rofman

The software stack under development within a European coordinated effort on tools for burning plasma modelling is presented. The project is organised as a Task (TSVV Task 10) under the new E-TASC initiative (Litaudon et al 2022 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusio ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2023

Nonlinear interaction of Alfvénic instabilities and turbulence via the modification of the equilibrium profiles

Laurent Villard, Alberto Bottino, Xiao Wang

Nonlinear simulations of Alfvén modes (AMs) driven by energetic particles (EPs) in the presence of turbulence are performed with the gyrokinetic particle-in-cell code ORB5. The AMs carry a heat flux, and consequently they nonlinearly modify the plasma temp ...

Cambridge University Press2023

Gyrokinetic simulation of short wavelength ion temperature gradient instabilities in the ADITYA-U tokamak

Laurent Villard, Emmanuel Lanti

In this work, linear and nonlinear collisionless electrostatic simulation studies of the standard and short wavelength ion temperature gradient mode (SWITG) for experimental profiles and parameters of ADITYA-U tokamak are performed using the linear global ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2023

Study of fast-ion-driven toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes impacting on the global confinement in TCV L-mode plasmas

Stephan Brunner, Laurent Villard, Stefano Coda, Javier García Hernández, Aylwin Iantchenko, Justin Richard Ball, Matteo Vallar, Umesh Kumar, Oleg Krutkin, Luke Simons, Jesús Poley Sanjuán, Samuele Mazzi, Baruch Rofman

Following recent observations of unstable Toroidal Alfven Eigenmodes (TAEs) in a counter-current Neutral Beam Injection (NBI) scenario developed in TCV, an in-depth analysis of the impact of such modes on the global confinement and performance is carried o ...

2023

Gyrokinetic simulations of turbulence and zonal flows driven by steep profile gradients using a delta-f approach with an evolving background Maxwellian

Stephan Brunner, Laurent Villard, Alberto Bottino, Ben McMillan, Moahan Murugappan

Long global gyrokinetic turbulence simulations are particularly challenging in situations where the system deviates strongly from its initial state and when fluctuation levels are high, for example, in strong gradient regions. For particle-in-cell simulati ...

2022

Electron-cyclotron resonance heating and current drive source for flux-driven gyrokinetic simulations of tokamaks

Stephan Brunner, Laurent Villard, Stefano Coda, Joan Decker, Jean Arthur Cazabonne

Electromagnetic waves that resonate with the cyclotron motion of electrons in a magnetized plasma can efficiently transfer their momentum and energy to the plasma. This is routinely used to heat or drive current in tokamak plasmas. The impact of this local ...

2022

Linear and nonlinear excitation of TAE modes by external electromagnetic perturbations using ORB5

Laurent Villard, Alberto Bottino, Emmanuel Lanti, Mohsen Sadr

The excitation of toroidicity-induced Alfven eigenmodes (TAEs) using prescribed external electromagnetic perturbations (hereafter 'antenna') acting on a confined toroidal plasma, as well as its nonlinear couplings to other modes in the system, is studied. ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2022