Tim Happel appointed Director at the MPI for Plasma Physics
His new division investigates dynamic processes in plasmas that occur both in the confinement region and near the wall of nuclear fusion facilities.
Dr Tim Happel has been a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching near Munich since 1 July 2024. His new ‘Plasma Dynamics’ division at IPP will start on 1 September and will focus on dynamic processes in fusion plasmas. His team will be closely involved in the operation and diagnostic development of the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak facility. ASDEX Upgrade is one of the key experiments in worldwide nuclear fusion research and plays a central role with regard to the next-generation tokamak, ITER, which is currently under construction.
What dynamic processes take place in the plasma core, at the plasma edge and near the wall of fusion devices? And what are their consequences? These are central questions in Dr Happel's research work. By gaining a better understanding of these phenomena, the physicist hopes to develop and understand plasma discharge scenarios that will optimise the efficiency of future fusion reactors.
Tim Happel's team will also investigate the influence of fluctuations on particle and energy transport in fusion experiments. This work will serve to reduce heat losses in plasmas and minimise the load on the wall material.
In order to gain new insights into the dynamic plasma processes, Dr Happel also wants to carry out comparative experiments at Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X). W7-X is operated at the Greifswald branch of IPP and is the largest and most efficient stellarator in the world. The IPP theory departments will also be involved in this project with numerical simulations. The interplay between experiment and simulation should pave the way for reliable predictions for future fusion experiments and reactors.
About Tim Happel
Tim Happel was born in Gießen in 1980 and studied physics at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel from 2000 to 2006. During his diploma thesis, he gained his first experience in fusion research at the TJ-K stellarator. He worked on the characterisation of microinstabilities at the transition from closed to open field lines.
Dr Happel completed his doctorate at the Spanish fusion research laboratory at CIEMAT in Madrid, where TJ-II, the second largest stellarator in the world, is operated. There he developed a Doppler backscattering system which enabled him to successfully observe plasma flows and their interaction with turbulent structures. Tim Happel was awarded the Itoh Prize for Plasma Turbulence for this work.
After completing his doctorate, Tim Happel moved to the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching in 2011, where he continued his research into plasma flows at the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak. In this context, he has headed the turbulence research group since 2023. At IPP, he extended his studies to tokamak operation modes with increased energy confinement. In particular, he intensively investigates the Improved Energy Confinement Mode (I-Mode) and plasmas with negative triangularity.