David C. PaceDeputy Director DIII-D National Fusion Facility General AtomicsSan Diego, California, USA Education Honors and Awards Professional Activities Research ExperienceTeaching Experience Publications and Presentations Co-author Publications Education University of California, Los Angeles, USAPh.D., Physics, 2009M.Sc., Physics 2003Committee Co-chairs: G.J. Morales and T.A. Carter San Diego State University, San Diego, California, […]
Research
Mapping and Uncertainty Analysis of Energy and Pitch Angle Phase Space in the DIII-D Fast Ion Loss Detector
The following work is a technical diagnostic paper concerning a method for calculating the uncertainty in a probe that measures energetic ion losses in the DIII-D tokamak. The fast ion loss detector (FILD) measures the pitch angle and the energy of these ions that hit it at the outer wall. That measurement is incredibly valuable […]
Gamma Ray Imager on the DIII-D Tokamak
This is a technical paper concerning the design and commissioning of a gamma ray camera on the DIII-D tokamak. The diagnostic, the Gamma Ray Imager (GRI), is a pinhole camera constructed of lead. This diagnostic is being used to study the behavior of relativistic electron beams in magnetically confined fusion plasmas. Gamma rays can be […]
Exponential Frequency Spectrum and Lorentzian Pulses in Magnetized Plasmas
Sections Details and Download Previous Work Modeling Lorentzian Pulses What is the Relevance? This is a review of a paper recently published by my group. Here, the paper is paraphrased to reach a wider audience. The plasma physics community can read the original publication, so my goal is to provide an example of current plasma […]
Keeping Fusion Plasmas Hot
The following article first appeared as David C. Pace, William W. Heidbrink, and Michael A. Van Zeeland, “Keeping Fusion Plasmas Hot,” Physics Today 68, 34 (2015). In the article, we discuss interactions between high energy ions and electromagnetic waves in magnetically confined plasmas. These plasmas are produced in nuclear fusion reactors known as tokamaks. My research […]
Energetic ion transport by microturbulence is insignificant in tokamaks
This paper means a lot to me. It has both a technical side and an emotional side. The physics of this paper concerns how small scale turbulent fluctuations in the plasma (e.g., fluctuations of the plasma density) can affect the way that energetic ions move across the magnetic field. Fundamentally, the orbit size of these […]