Agenda – Varenna-Lausanne Workshop 2026

Sunday, 20 September 2026

16:00 – 19:00 Registration in Villa Monastero

Monday, 21 September 2026

9:00 Welcome — J. Graves and P. Helander

Session 1: Fundamental Theory of Turbulence and Transport

9:10 I-1

A. Schekochihin

Tutorial: "As simple as possible but not simpler": physics of turbulence and transport in fusion plasmas via reduced fluid models

9:55 I-2

G. Acton

Computational and Theoretical Advances for Zonal Flows in Stellarators

10:40 Coffee break

11:10 I-3

J. Burby

Statistical equilibrium model for stellarators

11:55 I-4

P. Costello

Constrained optimal modes: tightening thermodynamic bounds on the linear growth rate of microinstabilities

12:40 Group photo in Villa Monastero's garden

12:50 Lunch

Session 2: Tokamak Plasma Regimes

15:00 I-5

N. Rivals

Understanding of the X-Point Radiator regimes in tokamaks through an example in the WEST device

15:45 I-6

F. Maiden

The theory behind solenoid-free microwave driven start-up in tokamaks

16:30 Coffee break

17:00 I-7

K. Zhang

Turbulence in the Quasicontinuous Exhaust Regime

17:45 End

19:30 Welcome Party — Blanco Lounge Bar, Varenna

Tuesday, 22 September 2026

Session 3: Fast Ions, Runaways and Heat Transport in Stellarators

9:00 I-8

T. Foster

Analytical formulas for alpha-particle orbits in stellarators

9:45 I-9

M. Fitzgerald

Conservation and destruction of alpha particle invariants in optimized stellarators

10:30 Coffee break

11:00 I-10

I. Ekmark

Runaway electrons in stellarators: Unlikely or unavoidable

11:45 I-11

H. Thienpondt

Nonlinear critical gradients in W7-X: Insights from massive gyrokinetic simulations and experimental measurements of turbulent heat transport

12:30 Lunch

14:30 – 16:00 Poster session 1: P1 – P13

16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break

16:30 – 18:00 Poster session 2: P14 – P26

Wednesday, 23 September 2026

Session 4: Microturbulent Transport and Gyrokinetics in Tokamaks

9:00 I-12

H. Sun

The unusual dynamics of turbulent transport in spherical tokamaks with large field line pitch angle

9:45 I-13

L. De Gianni

Understanding Trapped Electron Modes in negative triangularity

10:30 I-14

S. Liu

Development of the Gyrokinetic-MHD Hybrid Code cuGMEC and Its Nonlinear Simulations of Alpha Particle-driven Alfvén Eigenmodes in ITER

11:15 Coffee break

11:35 I-15

S. Choudhary

Gyrokinetic Transport in flat-Temperature Tokamak Plasmas

12:20 I-16

J. McClenaghan

Integrating Gyrokinetic Flux Predictions with Ideal MHD Stability Boundaries

13:05 Lunch

19:30 Conference dinner — Ristorante La Breva, Lierna (dinner at 20:00, bus at 19:30)

Thursday, 24 September 2026

Session 5: Stellarator Optimisation

9:00 I-17

J. Velasco

Tutorial: New avenues for stellarator design enabled by piecewise omnigenity

9:45 I-18

W. Sengupta

Periodic Korteweg-de Vries soliton potentials generate quasisymmetric magnetic field strength in both vacuum and finite plasma-beta equilibrium

10:30 Coffee break

11:00 I-19

A. Goodman

Searching for SQuIDs: Developments in the optimisation of Stable Quasi-Isodynamic Designs

11:45 I-20

P. Jurašić

Designing stellarator island divertors by controlling the island flux

12:30 Lunch

14:30 – 16:00 Poster session 3: P27 – P39

16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break

16:30 – 18:00 Poster session 4: P40 – P51

Friday, 25 September 2026

Session 6: Fast Ion and Nonlinear Physics in Tokamaks

9:00 I-21

H. Cai

Cross-scale Interaction between Microturbulence and Fishbone in Fusion Plasmas

9:45 I-22

D. Korger

A nonlinear Schrödinger equation for the description of geodesic-acoustic-modes in tokamaks

10:30 Coffee break

11:00 I-23

J. Wang

Comprehensive simulations of bursting shear Alfvén waves in tokamaks and their control via phase space engineering with ICRF waves

11:45 I-24

E. G. Devin

Nonlinear evolution of strongly driven perturbative kinetic instabilities

12:30 Closing session

12:45 End

Poster List

P1: Kinetic ballooning modes and electromagnetic stability in W7-X — K. Aleynikova

P2: Gyrokinetic investigation of zero magnetic shear regions in tokamaks — O. Anuaruly

P3: Simplest Models of Tokamak MHD — Wayne Arter

P4: Gyrokinetic analysis of internal transport barriers in stellarators — J. Ball

P5: Reduced model of the interaction between microturbulence, energetic particles and energetic particle driven modes — T. Barberis

P6: MHD Equilibria via Voigt Regularization — Andrew Brown

P7: Analysis of the electromagnetic and electrostatic instability induced by runaway electrons in a magnetized plasma — A. Cardinali

P8: Nonlinear saturation of Axisymmetric (n=0) modes driven by Energetic Particles in Tokamaks — S. Cavallero

P9: Stellarator design points and optimized equilibria for compact high-field nuclear fusion reactors — F. Ceccherini

P10: Application of ECRH and NBI in compact high-field stellarator nuclear fusion reactors — L. Galeotti

P11: Minimal Model for Floquet Modes in a Tokamak — M. Evans

P12: Validation and benchmarking of gyrokinetics in low-recycling lithiated conditions with Gkeyll and XGC — M. Francisquez

P13: Effect of magnetic drift on the stability structure of the ambipolar condition in nonaxisymmetric plasmas — K. Fujita

P14: Resonant staircase formation and zonal flow amplification in tokamak turbulence: the role of negative mass instability and mode synchronization — D. Del Sarto

P15: Analytical approximation of the velocity distribution through the collisional layer — A. Geraldini

P16: Continuous linear to nonlinear analytic treatment of tearing and double tearing modes with toroidal effects and fast particles — J. P. Graves

P17: Bootstrap current beyond the near omnigenous asymptotic model — G. Graßler

P18: Runaway-Electron Avalanches as a Branching Markov Process — S. Guinchard

P19: Driftless Star: an end-to-end pipeline for transport-consistent stellarator optimization — R. K. Hashmani

P20: Dynamics of ion temperature gradient modes in burning plasma conditions in the presence of energetic particles — R. Ivanov

P21: kobra: a new Vlasov code with AMR — S. Konewko

P22: Full-F Gyrofluid Vortex interaction with arbitrary wavelength Polarization — Franz. F. Locker

P23: Second stability region for gyrokinetics and the L-H transition — R.J.J. Mackenbach

P24: Global Fluid Turbulence Simulations of W7-X Internal Magnetic Island Configurations — M. Madeira

P25: Reduced Magnetohydrodinamics studies on tungsten transport inside magnetic islands — Chiara Marchetto

P26: Interpretation of the Dimits shift as a phase transition — L. N. Marquant

P27: Kinetic modeling of emissive plasma sheath — A. Medouni

P28: Fast ITG eigenmode-eigenfrequency prediction in general geometry — M.C.L. Morren

P29: An improved knock-on operator for runaway avalanche modelling — Isabel Muzio

P30: Direct optimization of steady-state plasma profiles in stellarators — E. Lascas Neto

P31: Theory of nonlinear zonal flow dynamics in toroidal geometry — R. Nies

P32: On the Shafranov shift in stellarators — P. Helander

P33: The role of different nonlinearities in two-dimensional fluid ITG models — G. Paramasivam

P34: Gradient-driven instabilities in 2D models for tokamak edge — F.I. Parra

P35: Stellarator-Tokamak Hybrid configurations for representative TCV discharges — L. Rais

P36: Convective-diffusive modeling of anomalous particle and energy transport in 2D interchange-dominated simulations. — O. Renders

P37: Nonlinear interactions between energetic particles, Alfvén eigenmodes and ITG driven turbulence in global, gyrokinetic, electromagnetic simulations — B. Rofman

P38: Assessing the effect of alpha-particle-driven modes on the fusion power gain in a burning plasma — J. Ruiz Ruiz

P39: Understanding the sensitivities of the radial electric field between favorable and unfavorable configurations using SOLEDGE3X simulations — G. El Saifi

P40: Plasma transport in a chaotic magnetic field using an MHD model — V. Simon

P41: Nonlocal integral kernels for ICRH – Progress with the implementation into PSYDAC — C. Slaby

P42: Guiding center motion in self-consistent axisymmetric mirror equilibria — C. D. Stephens

P43: Adjoint-based trust region method with DGSEM discretization for MRxMHD in HKT slab geometry — Rongping Tang

P44: Solving the phase-space relaxed MHD model: from cross-field flow to the weak ideal Ohm's law — A. Tavassoli

P45: Stellarator Coil Optimization for Beta-Resilient Divertor Island Positioning — M. Titze

P46: Electron-temperature-gradient turbulence and secondary-instability saturation with large density gradients — L.-P. Turica

P47: Kinetic solutions to the stationary collisionless magnetised plasma sheath — Nicole Vadot

P48: 3D JOREK simulations of runaway electron benign termination on TCV — C. Wang

P49: Impacts of effective diffusion caused by electron temperature gradient turbulence — Tomo-Hiko Watanabe

P50: Nonlinear frequency chirping of energetic-particle-driven geodesic acoustic modes — R. Wu

P51: On the kinetic continuous spectrum in toroidal plasmas — F. Zonca