New appointment at Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics

Professor Ulrich Stroth appointed as Scientific Fellow

The objective of the research conducted at IPP is to develop a power plant that, like the sun, derives energy from fusion of atomic nuclei. The fuel used is a low-density hydrogen plasma. To bring the fusion fire to ignition the plasma has to be confined in magnetic fields and heated to high temperatures of over 100 million degrees. In their work on the large-scale ASDEX Upgrade device at IPP Professor Stroth and his co-workers are primarily concerned with investigating the processes occurring in the edge zone of the hot plasma and studying its interaction with the sites at which the plasma comes into contact with the vessel wall. His particular interests are the turbulence in the plasma and the loss of plasma particles that escape from the magnetic cage. The greater the success in avoiding turbulences in the edge region of the plasma and in putting up transport barriers for the hot core plasma, the greater will be the energy yield of a future fusion power plant.

With Ulrich Stroth – born in 1957 in Erbach im Odenwald – IPP have secured the services of a leading experimental plasma physicists: After completing his physics studies at the Technical University of Darmstadt and taking his PhD at Laue Langevin Institute in Grenoble he was already with IPP in Garching from 1987 for 12 years. Here he was concerned with investigating the magnetic confinement of the ultrahot plasma in the ASDEX and Wendelstein 7-AS devices. Research periods in the USA and Japan enabled him to extend his activities to other fusion devices. In 1996 he was awarded his postdoctoral lectureship with a thesis on comparative transport studies in fusion plasmas. In 1999, he was appointed as professor of physics at the University of Kiel, where he formed a research group and installed the TJ-K experiment for investigating plasma turbulence. This small device was transferred to the Plasma Research Institute at the University of Stuttgart, when he became director there in 2004. Besides their turbulence studies the Stuttgart scientists are working in close collaboration with IPP to apply microwaves for heating, diagnostics and stabilization of fusion plasmas. They are also conducting studies on low-temperature plasmas and their applications, such as activating, coating and sterilizing surfaces. In November 2010 Ulrich Stroth joined IPP as Scientific Fellow and Division Head.

Isabella Milch