Anna Perona
Position: postdoctoral research fellow
Interests:
My activity of research concerns the analytical and numerical investigation of the behavior of of energetic electrons and ions in magnetised plasmas.
I had the opportunity to further improve my knowledge of this subject during my stages in two of the leading European centres for the research on plasma fusion, namely the Joint European Torus (JET, Culham) and the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA, Cadarache).
At JET, in particular, I worked at the numerical part of a problem on the resistive stability of a plasma with runaway electrons following a tokamak disruption. Besides, I was also introduced to the numerical investigation of the behaviour of fast ions in the presence of a n=1 kink perturbation in the JET geometry. My experience at JET with the particle-following HAGIS code allows me to keep collaborating on the investigation of the behaviour of energetic ions in the presence of different magnetohydrodynamic perturbations.
My present work is mainly focused on the acceleration of thermal electrons in the presence of the strong fields characterizing a magnetic reconnection event. The interesting features of this subject are represented both by the investigation of the complex evolving magnetic field topology in various fluid models of magnetic reconnection and by the effects of these fields on the single electron dynamics and on the global electron distribution function. This topic offers a further important aspect, namely the possibility to extend this investigation to the wide range of different environments presenting particle acceleration effects in the presence of different MHD backgrounds, both in fusion and in space plasmas.
In order to investigate the electron behaviour in a three dimensional magnetic configuration I have developed a numerical tool, able to follow the single electron dynamics in the presence of the magnetic reconnection fields and to calculate the evolution of the electron distribution function and of its moments. A nice visualization of an electron trajectory on a 3D magnetic surface can be seen at the link single electron orbit on a 3D magnetic surface
(created in collaboration with Mrs. Julia Branke, scientific web developer at CFSA).
Peer Reviewed Publications:
C. Perez von Thun, A. Salmi, A. Perona et al., “Study of fast ion transport induced by fishbones on JET”, Nucl. Fusion 52, 094010 (2012), doi: 10.1088/0029-5515/52/9/094010
C. Perez von Thun, A. Perona et al., “Numerical simulations of fast ion loss detector measurements for fishbones on JET”, Nucl. Fusion 51, 053003 (2011), doi: 10.1088/0029-5515/51/5/053003
C. Perez von Thun, A. Perona et al., “MeV-range fast ion losses induced by fishbones on JET”, Nucl. Fusion 50, 084009 (2010), doi: 10.1088/0029-5515/50/8/084009
A. Perona, D. Borgogno, D. Grasso, “Electron response in gyrofluid simulations of magnetic reconnection”, J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 260, 012015 (2010), doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/260/1/012015
A. Perona, L.-G. Eriksson, D. Grasso, “Electron response to collisionless magnetic reconnection”, Phys. Plasmas 17, 042104 (2010), doi: 10.1063/1.3365518
P. Helander, D. Grasso, R. J. Hastie, A. Perona, “Resistive stability of a plasma with runaway electrons”, Phys. Plasmas 14, 122102 (2007), doi: 10.1063/1.2817016
Proceedings Publications:
On linkedin: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/anna-perona/27/773/886
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Contact Details
Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics
Department of Physics
University of Warwick
Coventry
CV4 7AL
United Kingdom
telephone:
44 (0) 24 761 50214
email:
A.Perona_at_warwick.ac.uk
office:
PS124
