Master thesis project for students at KTH
http://www.nada.kth.se/~jaun/Projects.html
NADA, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Galerkin Wavelet Method for global waves in 1 dimension

In a plasma where two types of waves propagate with the same phase velocity, a linear coupling occurs through which energy can be transfered from one wave branch to another. This so-called mode-conversion phenomenon has been known for decades in basic plasma science and plays a major role in the heating and current generation with waves. The shear complexity of the problem, however, made it impossible to solve in anything but the simplest 1D configurations. Only recently, with the advent of powerful computers and sophisticated mathematical methods, has it become possible to tackle the 2D geometry of a tokamak using either a global or a ray-tracing approach.

Aiming at major improvement of efficiency in the former, this project consists in formulating a Galerkin discretisation using both finite elements and wavelets to solve increasingly sophisticated time in- / dependent model wave equations in 1D. Special care will be devoted to the boundary conditions, the convergence and the cost for computing overlap integrals and solving the linear system iteratively.

This is an ambitious project in numerical analysis for a student who is willing to explore a new territory that could have a major impact in computational plasma physics.

For further information, contact André JAUN and consult http://www.nada.kth.se/~jaun.