An open-source python package for atomic kinetics studies in tokamak plasmas

Plasma-impurity reaction rates are a crucial part of modelling tokamak plasmas, particularly in the scrape-off layer, where they play an important role in determining particle balance, impurity transport, energy flows, etc. Commonly used datasets for this task, such as ADAS, assume Maxwellian electrons, but this assumption may be violated due to non-local parallel transport Power et al. (2023). There is a lack of alternatives to ADAS which are both open source and can treat non-Maxwellian electrons. For this reason, SIKE has been developed (Scrape-off layer Impurities with Kinetic Electrons): an open-source python package for atomic kinetics studies. Generating high-quality atomic data is a delicate and time-consuming task, and is largely independent from solving the rate equations, so SIKE has in-built separation between the rate equation solver and the atomic data. This, along with a straightforward JSON schema for the input data, facilitates iterative improvement in the underlying data and improves the transparency of generated outputs.

Repository¶

https://github.com/plasdom/sike