IFS Seminar

Sep

2025

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

In Person (view details)

Featured Speaker(s): David Zarzoso Fernandez

Title: Artificial Intelligence applied to nuclear fusion

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Abstract:

Nuclear fusion holds the potential to provide a nearly limitless, clean energy source by mimicking the processes that power the Sun, offering a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels without harmful emissions or long-lived radioactive waste. If achieved at scale, fusion could revolutionize global energy systems, reducing our dependence on nonrenewable resources and significantly cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

However, on the route towards steady-state energy production by means of nuclear fusion reactions, several issues need to be addressed. First, the confinement of energetic particles (EP) is crucial to ensure the transfer of energy to the thermal plasma and to achieve self-sustained fusion reactions. These EP can drive some instabilities that tend to de-confine them. Second, together with EP, turbulence is another major element in the description of a fusion plasma. Turbulence is known to limit the performance of nuclear fusion devices reducing the confinement of particles and energy. Therefore, controlling EP-driven instabilities and turbulence is of paramount importance.

Two approaches are typically used to study these two phenomena: experiments and numerical modelling. However, both approaches have limitations: humans cannot identify and classify every instability that may arise in a single experiment, and turbulence analysis through simulations can become computationally expensive and, at times, unfeasible. In that context, we have investigated the use of AI algorithms to assist scientists in gaining deeper insights into experiments and creating surrogate models for turbulence.

Brief Bio

David Zarzoso obtained a PhD in Plasma Physics from École polytechnique (France) in 2012, followed by postdoctoral appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (Germany) and Aix-Marseille University (France). In 2016, he joined the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), where he has since led several research projects on modelling of nuclear fusion plasmas. Currently, David Zarzoso is head of the Sustainable Energy and Mobility axis at the Mechanics, Modelling & Process Engineering (M2P2) laboratory, where he also initiated and developed the lab’s activities in Artificial Intelligence. His research focuses on the development and use of advanced HPC codes together with AI algorithms for energetic particle physics and turbulence in fusion plasmas.

Location

PMA 11.204

IFS Seminar

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