Justin Ball
EPFL SB SPC-TH
PPB 117 (Bâtiment PPB)
Station 13
1015 Lausanne
+41 21 693 19 12
+41 21 693 39 18
Office:
PPB 117
EPFL
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SPC-TH
Web site: Web site: https://spc.epfl.ch/
Biography
Dr. Justin Ball is a staff scientist studying theoretical plasma physics and nuclear fusion energy. His research primarily focuses on the effect of plasma shaping on turbulence in tokamaks. He is the principle investigator of the EUROfusion Theory, Simulation, Verification, and Validation project on negative triangularity. Additionally, he is an avid fusion science communicator via magazine articles, lectures, and podcasts. In 2019, he and Jason Parisi published a popular science book titled The Future of Fusion Energy.He holds a Bachelor degree from the University of Michigan and a Master's from MIT, both in Nuclear Engineering. While at MIT, he was a leading designer of the original ARC reactor, which served as the foundation for the startup company Commonwealth Fusion Systems and has raised $2 billion to date.
In 2016, he completed a PhD in Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford and received the European Physical Society Plasma Physics PhD Research Award. Previously, he has worked at a nuclear power plant, a nuclear navy research laboratory, and a nuclear weapons laboratory.
Publications
Infoscience publications
Study of impurity C transport and plasma rotation in negative triangularity on the TCV tokamak
Plasma Physics And Controlled Fusion. 2024-07-01. DOI : 10.1088/1361-6587/ad5229.Physical insights from the aspect ratio dependence of turbulence in negative triangularity plasmas
Plasma Physics And Controlled Fusion. 2024-07-01. DOI : 10.1088/1361-6587/ad4d1d.Experiments and gyrokinetic simulations of TCV plasmas with negative triangularity in view of DTT operations
Plasma Physics And Controlled Fusion. 2024-06-01. DOI : 10.1088/1361-6587/ad4674.Reducing transport via extreme flux-surface triangularity
Nuclear Fusion. 2024-05-01. DOI : 10.1088/1741-4326/ad3563.Study of fast-ion-driven toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes impacting on the global confinement in TCV L-mode plasmas
Frontiers in Physics. 2023. DOI : 10.3389/fphy.2023.1225787.Local gyrokinetic simulations of tokamaks with non-uniform magnetic shear
Plasma Physics And Controlled Fusion. 2023-01-01. DOI : 10.1088/1361-6587/aca715.Ultra long turbulent eddies, magnetic topology, and the triggering of internal transport barriers in tokamaks
Nuclear Fusion. 2023-01-01. DOI : 10.1088/1741-4326/aca213.Effect of collisions on non-adiabatic electron dynamics in ITG-driven microturbulence
Physics Of Plasmas. 2021-09-01. DOI : 10.1063/5.0055303.Development of advanced linearized gyrokinetic collision operators using a moment approach
Journal Of Plasma Physics. 2021-09-10. DOI : 10.1017/S0022377821000830.A non-twisting flux tube for local gyrokinetic simulations
Plasma Physics And Controlled Fusion. 2021-06-01. DOI : 10.1088/1361-6587/abf8f4.Toroidal and slab ETG instability dominance in the linear spectrum of JET-ILW pedestals
Nuclear Fusion. 2020-12-01. DOI : 10.1088/1741-4326/abb891.How eigenmode self-interaction affects zonal flows and convergence of tokamak core turbulence with toroidal system size
Journal of Plasma Physics. 2020-09-28. DOI : 10.1017/S0022377820000999.Eliminating turbulent self-interaction through the parallel boundary condition in local gyrokinetic simulations
Journal of Plasma Physics. 2020-03-20. DOI : 10.1017/S0022377820000197.Maximizing specific energy by breeding deuterium
Nuclear Fusion. 2019-10-01. DOI : 10.1088/1741-4326/ab394c.The effect of background flow shear on gyrokinetic turbulence in the cold ion limit
Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion. 2019-04-26. DOI : 10.1088/1361-6587/ab1320.Optimized up-down asymmetry to drive fast intrinsic rotation in tokamaks
Nuclear Fusion. 2018. DOI : 10.1088/1741-4326/aa9a50.Up-down asymmetric tokamaks
University of Oxford, 2016.Intrinsic momentum transport in up–down asymmetric tokamaks
Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion. 2014. DOI : 10.1088/0741-3335/56/9/095014.Selected publications
| B.F. McMillan, J. Ball, S. Brunner Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion 61 (2019) 055006. |
Simulating background shear flow in local gyrokinetic simulations |
| J. Ball and F.I. Parra Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion 59 (2017) 024007. |
Turbulent momentum transport due to the beating between different tokamak flux surface shaping effects |
| J. Ball, F.I. Parra, J. Lee, and A.J. Cerfon Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion 58 (2016) 125015. |
Effect of the Shafranov shift and the gradient of beta on intrinsic momentum transport in up-down asymmetric tokamaks |
| J. Ball and F.I. Parra Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion 58 (2016) 055016. |
Scaling of up-down asymmetric turbulent momentum flux with poloidal shaping mode number in tokamaks |
| J. Ball, F.I. Parra, and M. Barnes Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion 58 (2016) 045023. |
Poloidal tilting symmetry of high order tokamak flux surface shaping in gyrokinetics |
| B. Sorbom, J. Ball, T.R. Palmer, F.J. Mangiarotti, J.M. Sierchio, P. Bonoli, C. Kasten, D.A. Sutherland, H.S. Barnard, C.B. Haakonsen, J. Goh, C. Sung, and D.G. Whyte Fusion Engineering and Design 100 (2015) 378. |
ARC: A compact, high-field, fusion nuclear science facility and demonstration power plant with demountable magnets |
| J. Ball, F.I. Parra, and M. Barnes Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion 57 (2015) 035006. |
Intuition for the radial penetration of flux surface shaping in tokamaks |
| P. Rodrigues, N.F. Loureiro, J. Ball, F.I. Parra Nuclear Fusion 54 (2014) 093003. |
Conditions for up-down asymmetry in the core of tokamak equilibria |
| J. Ball Massachusetts Institute of Technology Master's Thesis (2013). |
Nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of intrinsic rotation in up-down asymmetric tokamaks |