Fatima Ebrahiimi in front of blackboard

Fatima Ebrahimi

Theory of nonlinear ELMs as reconnection bursts

Fatima Ebrahimi

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Monday, March 21, 2022

1:00pm

PSFC Seminars

Abstract: In this seminar, I will present new results on the rise and nonlinear relaxation of Peeling-Ballooning ELMs (Edge-Localized Modes).The formation of current sheets and the transition to 3-D current-sheet instability is demonstrated through fully nonlinear resistive MHD simulations of P-B ELMs in DIII-D discharges. Large-scale axisymmetric current sheets, as well as small-scale poloidally extending current sheets, are formed as the coherent P-B ELM filaments nonlinearly evolve. A  model for the magnetic self-organization during nonlinear ELMs is presented.

Bio: Fatima Ebrahimi is a principal research physicist in the PPPL Theory Department and an affiliated research scholar in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University. Her research interests span from magnetically confined fusion plasmas to flow-driven plasmas, such as astrophysical accretion disks. She has written many papers over a wide range of topics, published in a number of leading peer-reviewed journals, including Phys. Rev. Lett., Nuclear Fusion, Physics of Plasmas, Astrophysical Journal and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Before PPPL, she was a research associate at the Alfven Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden for one year, and then
was a research associate and research scientist with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Frontier Center for Magnetic Self-Organization in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas (CMSO) at the University of Wisconsin. Before her research appointment at Princeton University in 2013, she was a research assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire. She received her Ph.D. in plasma physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003. Ebrahimi has been serving on DPP, Sherwood and DCOMP Executive committees as well as the APS Informing the Public committee. She is the inventor of a concept for a reconnecting plasma-based rocket thruster (the most read JPP article ever and 2021 most read aerospace story of Institution of Mechanical Engineers).