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Electromagnetic microtearing modes (MTMs) have been observed in many different spherical tokamak regimes. Understanding how these and other electromagnetic modes nonlinearly saturate is likely critical in understanding the confinement of a high $\beta$ spherical tokamak (ST). Equilibrium $E\times B$ sheared flows have sometimes been found to significantly suppress low $\beta$ ion scale transport in both gyrokinetic simulations and in experiment. This work aims to understand the conditions under which $E\times B$ sheared flow impacts on the saturation of MTM simulations. Two experimental regimes are examined from MAST and NSTX, on surfaces that have unstable MTMs. The MTM driven transport on a local flux surface in MAST is shown to be more resilient to suppression via $E\times B$ shear, compared to the case from NSTX where the MTM transport is found to be significantly suppressed. This difference in the response to flow shear is explained through the impact of magnetic shear, $\hat{s}$ on the MTM linear growth rate dependence on ballooning angle, $\theta_0$. At low $\hat{s}$, the growth rate depends weakly on $\theta_0$, but at higher $\hat{s}$, the MTM growth rate peaks at $\theta_0 = 0$, with regions of stability at higher $\theta_0$. Equilibrium $E\times B$ sheared flows act to advect the $\theta_0$ of a mode in time, providing a mechanism which suppresses the transport from these modes when they become stable. The dependence of $\gamma^{MTM}$ on $\theta_0$ is in qualitative agreement with a recent theory [M.R. Hardman et al (2023)] at low $\beta$ when $q\sim1$, but the agreement worsens at higher $q$ where the theory breaks down. This work highlights the important role of the safety factor profile in determining the impact of equilibrium $E\times B$ shear on the saturation level of MTM turbulence., Comment: 20 pages, 16 figures

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) promises to revolutionize the field of security in communication, with applications ranging from state secrets to personal data, making it a key player in the ongoing battle against cyber threats. Reference-Frame-Independent (RFI) QKD aims to simplify QKD implementations by allowing to reduce the requirements of alignment on a shared reference frame. This is done by performing two mutually unbiased measurements on the control states. In this work, we present a novel fully passive receiver for time-bin encoded RFI-QKD. Conversion of time-bin to polarization is employed to perform the required quantum measurement in a fully passive manner. Furthermore, to overcome experimental errors, we retrieved a complete description of our measurement apparatus by employing a recently introduced Quantum Detector Self-Characterization technique, without performing tomographic studies on the detection stage. In fact, the security analysis carried out in this work uses experimentally retrieved Positive Operator Valued Measurements, which consider our receiver defects, substituting the ideal expected operators and thus increasing the overall level of secrecy. Lastly, we conducted a proof-of-principle experiment that validated the feasibility of our method and its applicability to QKD applications., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 1 table

Plasma turbulence on disparate spatial and temporal scales plays a key role in defining the level of confinement achievable in tokamaks, with the development of reduced numerical models for cross-scale turbulence effects informed by experimental measurements an essential step. MAST-U is a well-equipped facility having instruments to measure ion and electron scale turbulence at the plasma edge. However, measurement of core electron scale turbulence is challenging, especially in H mode. Using a novel synthetic diagnostic approach, we present simulated measurement specifications of a proposed mm-wave based collective scattering instrument optimised for measuring both normal and binormal electron scale turbulence in the core and edge of MAST-U. A powerful modelling framework has been developed that combines beam-tracing techniques with gyrokinetic simulations to predict the sensitivity, localisation and spectral range of measurement. For the reconstructed MAST 022769 shot, a maximum measurable normalised bi-normal wavenumber of $k_{\perp} \rho_{e} \sim 0.6$ was predicted in the core and $k_{\perp} \rho_{e} \sim 0.79$ near the pedestal, with localisation lengths $L_{FWHM}$ ranging from $\sim$ 0.4 m in the core at $k_{\perp} \rho_{e} \sim 0.1$ to ~0.08m at $k_{\perp} \rho_{e} \sim 0.45$. Synthetic diagnostic analysis for the 022769 shot using CGYRO gyrokinetic simulation spectra reveal that ETG turbulence wavenumbers of peak spectral intensity comfortably fall within the measurable range of the instrument from the core to the pedestal. The proposed diagnostic opens up opportunities to study new regimes of turbulence and confinement in association with upcoming non-inductive, microwave based current drive experiments on MAST-U and can provide insight into cross-scale turbulence effects, while having suitability to operate during burning plasma scenarios on future reactors such as STEP., Comment: 22 pages, 19 figures, journal submission

We prove that in strongly disordered, interacting, quantum chains, the conductance of a chain of length $L$ vanishes faster than $1/L$. This means that transport is anomalous in such chains. This phenomenon was first claimed in \cite{Basko2006,gornyi2005interacting} and a pioneering treatment appeared in \cite{Imbrie2016a}, Comment: 71 pages

The modelling of symmetric rigid dumbbell particles suspended in a Newtonian fluid, as a model of a rigid-rod polymeric solution, has been accomplished exclusively through the diffusion equation, which has been detailed elegantly by Bird et al. [Chapter 14 of $Dynamics \ of \ Polymeric \ Liquids$, Vol 2, Ed 2, (1987)]. In this tutorial, a straightforward approach for modelling a lopsided rigid dumbbell particle is presented by the Langevin analysis. The connector force between the dumbbell beads is obtained through the rigidity constraint of the center-to-center vector of the dumbbell using its Langevin equation. By directly averaging via the Langevin equation, the evolution of the center-to-center vector, and the configuration tensor are derived. The stress expressions for the dumbbell from the Langevin equation, and the diffusion equation for the orientation distribution function of the center-to-center vector of the dumbbell are also derived, and the final expressions agree with established results from other methods.

We revisit and expand the analysis in [15] of the localized phase of disordered pinning models. The arguments are developed for i.i.d. site disorder on which we assume only that the moment generating function is bounded in a neighborhood of the origin. Quantitative $C^\infty$ estimates on the free energy density are established, showing in particular that the regularity class is at least Gevrey-3. After explaining how a quenched concentration bound and the quenched Central Limit Theorem (CLT) on the number of the pinned sites, i.e., the contact number, can be extracted from the regularity estimates on the free energy, we establish a quenched Local CLT for the same quantity. The centering in these CLTs is random in the sense that it is disorder dependent and a concentration bound and the CLT are established also for the centering sequence, as well as a Hardy-Littlewood random walk type-estimate for its fluctuations.

We derive the constitutive equation for a suspension of lopsided Hookean dumbbells. By lopsided, we mean that one bead is larger than the other. We find that all results derived for symmetric Hookean dumbbells can be taken over for lopsided ones by replacing$ \frac{2}{\zeta}$ with $\frac{1}{\zeta_1}+\frac{1}{\zeta_2}$, where ${\zeta}$, ${\zeta}_1$ and ${\zeta}_2$ are the bead friction coefficients for the symmetric dumbbell beads, and the first and second beads of the lopsided dumbbell respectively.

Starting from the assumption that saturation of plasma turbulence driven by temperature-gradient instabilities in fusion plasmas is achieved by a local energy cascade between a long-wavelength outer scale, where energy is injected into the fluctuations, and a small-wavelength dissipation scale, where fluctuation energy is thermalized by particle collisions, we formulate a detailed phenomenological theory for the influence of perpendicular flow shear on magnetized-plasma turbulence. Our theory introduces two distinct regimes, called the weak-shear and strong-shear regimes, each with its own set of scaling laws for the scale and amplitude of the fluctuations and for the level of turbulent heat transport. We discover that the ratio of the typical radial and poloidal wavenumbers of the fluctuations (i.e., their aspect ratio) at the outer scale plays a central role in determining the dependence of the turbulent transport on the imposed flow shear. Our theoretical predictions are found to be in excellent agreement with numerical simulations of two paradigmatic models of fusion-relevant plasma turbulence: (i) an electrostatic fluid model of slab electron-scale turbulence, and (ii) Cyclone-base-case gyrokinetic ion-scale turbulence. Additionally, our theory envisions a potential mechanism for the suppression of electron-scale turbulence by perpendicular ion-scale flows based on the role of the aforementioned aspect ratio of the electron-scale fluctuations., Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, 1 table

A quasi-linear reduced transport model is developed from a database of high-$\beta$ electromagnetic nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations performed with Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) relevant parameters. The quasi-linear model is fully electromagnetic and accounts for the effect of equilibrium flow shear using a novel approach. Its flux predictions are shown to agree quantitatively with predictions from local nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations across a broad range of STEP-relevant local equilibria. This reduced transport model is implemented in the T3D transport solver that is used to perform the first flux-driven simulations for STEP to account for transport from hybrid-KBM turbulence, which dominates over a wide region of the core plasma. Nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of the final transport steady state from T3D return turbulent fluxes that are consistent with the reduced model, indicating that the quasi-linear model may also be appropriate for describing the transport steady state. Within the assumption considered here, our simulations support the existence of a transport steady state in STEP with a fusion power comparable to that in the burning flat-top of the conceptual design, but do not demonstrate how this state can be accessed.

[ABRIDGED] This paper discusses the importance of parallel perturbations of the magnetic-field in gyrokinetic simulations of electromagnetic instabilities and turbulence at mid-radius in the burning plasma phase of the conceptual high-$\beta$, reactor-scale, tight-aspect-ratio tokamak STEP. Previous studies have revealed the presence of unstable hybrid kinetic ballooning modes (hKBMs) at binormal scales approaching the ion Larmor radius. In this STEP plasma it was found that the hKBM requires the inclusion of parallel magnetic-field perturbations to be linearly unstable. Here, the extent to which the inclusion of fluctuations in the parallel magnetic-field can be relaxed is explored through gyrokinetic simulations. In particular, the frequently used MHD approximation (dropping $\delta \! B_{\parallel}$ and setting the $\nabla B$ drift frequency equal to the curvature drift frequency) is discussed and simulations explore whether this approximation is useful for modelling STEP plasmas. It is shown that the MHD approximation can reproduce some of the linear properties of the full STEP gyrokinetic system, but is too stable at low $k_y$ and nonlinear simulations using the MHD approximation result in very different transport states. It is demonstrated that the MHD approximation is challenged by the high $\beta^{\prime}$ values in STEP, and that the approximation improves considerably at lower $\beta^{\prime}$. Furthermore, it is shown that the sensitivity of STEP to $\delta \! B_{\parallel}$ fluctuations is primarily because the plasma sits close to marginality and it is shown that in slightly more strongly driven conditions the hKBM is unstable without $\delta \! B_{\parallel}.$ Crucially, it is demonstrated that the state of large transport typically predicted by local electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulations of STEP plasmas is not solely due to $\delta \! B_{\parallel}$ physics., Comment: 29th IAEA FEC conference

We consider the scaling-invariant nonlocal Willmore energy, defined via the nonlocal mean curvature by Caffarelli, Roquejoffre and Savin. Our main result is the existence of minimizers in the class of convex $C^1$-curves.

We study the configurations of the nearest neighbor Ising ferromagnetic chain with IID centered and square integrable external random field in the limit in which the pairwise interaction tends to infinity. The available free energy estimates for this model show a strong form of disorder relevance, i.e., a strong effect of disorder on the free energy behavior, and our aim is to make explicit how the disorder affects the spin configurations. We give a quantitative estimate that shows that the infinite volume spin configurations are close to one explicit disorder dependent configuration when the interaction is large. Our results confirm predictions on this model obtained in D. S. Fisher, P. Le Doussal and C. Monthus (Phys. Rev. E 2001) by applying the renormalization group method introduced by D. S. Fisher (Phys. Rev. B 1995)., Comment: 37 pages, 7 figures. Changes wrt v1: added some references, 3 figures, and local changes

Integration of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) in existing telecommunication infrastructure is crucial for the widespread adoption of this quantum technology, which offers the distillation of unconditionally secure keys between users. In this letter, we report a field trial between the Points of Presence (POPs) placed in Treviso and in Venezia - Mestre, Italy, exploiting the QuKy commercial polarization-based QKD platforms developed by ThinkQuantum srl and two different standards of single-mode optical fibers, i.e. G.652 and G.655, as a quantum channel. In this field trial, several configurations were tested, including the co-existence of classical and quantum signals over the same fiber, providing a direct comparison between the performances of the G.652 and G.655 fiber standards for QKD applications., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

We present herein the results of a linear gyrokinetic analysis of electromagnetic microinstabilites in the conceptual high-$\beta$, reactor-scale, tight-aspect-ratio tokamak STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production, https://step.ukaea.uk). We examine a range of flux surfaces between the deep core and the pedestal top for two candidate flat-top operating points of the prototype device. Local linear gyrokinetic analysis is performed to determine the type of microinstabilities that arise under these reactor-relevant conditions. We find that the equilibria are dominated at ion binormal scales by a hybrid version of the Kinetic Ballooning Mode (KBM) instability that has significant linear drive contributions from the ion temperature gradient and from trapped electrons, while collisional Microtearing Modes (MTMs) are sub-dominantly also unstable at similar binormal scales. The hybrid-KBM and MTM exhibit very different radial scales. We study the sensitivity of these instabilities to physics parameters, and discuss potential mechanisms for mitigating them. The results of this investigation are compared to a small set of similar conceptual reactor designs in the literature. A detailed benchmark of the linear results is performed using three gyrokinetic codes; alongside extensive resolution testing and sensitivity to numerical parameters providing confidence in the results of our calculations, and paving the way for detailed nonlinear studies in a companion article.

In this work, we present first-of-their-kind nonlinear local gyrokinetic simulations of electromagnetic turbulence at mid-radius in the burning plasma phase of the conceptual high-$\beta$, reactor-scale, tight-aspect-ratio tokamak STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production). A prior linear analysis in D. Kennedy et al. 2023 Nucl. Fusion 63 126061 reveals the presence of unstable hybrid kinetic ballooning modes, where inclusion of the compressional magnetic field fluctuation, $\delta B_{\parallel}$, is crucial, and subdominant microtearing modes are found at binormal scales approaching the ion-Larmor radius. Local nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations on the selected surface in the central core region suggest that hybrid kinetic ballooning modes can drive large turbulent transport, and that there is negligible turbulent transport from subdominant microtearing modes when hybrid kinetic ballooning modes are artificially suppressed (through the omission of $\delta B_{\parallel}$). Nonlinear simulations that include perpendicular equilibrium flow shear can saturate at lower fluxes that are more consistent with the available sources in STEP. This analysis suggests that hybrid kinetic ballooning modes could play an important role in setting the turbulent transport in STEP, and possible mechanisms to mitigate turbulent transport are discussed. Increasing the safety factor or the pressure gradient strongly reduces turbulent transport from hybrid kinetic ballooning modes in the cases considered here. Challenges of simulating electromagnetic turbulence in this high-$\beta$ regime are highlighted. In particular the observation of radially extended turbulent structures in the absence of equilibrium flow shear motivates future advanced global gyrokinetic simulations that include $\delta B_\parallel$.

We investigate surfaces with bounded L^p-norm of the fractional mean curvature, a quantity we shall refer to as fractional Willmore-type functional. In the subcritical case and under convexity assumptions we show how this Willmore-functional controls local parametrization, and conclude as consequences lower Ahlfors-regularity, a weak Michael-Simon type inequality, and an application to stability.

We consider the continuum version of the random field Ising model in one dimension: this model arises naturally as weak disorder scaling limit of the original Ising model. Like for the Ising model, a spin configuration is conveniently described as a sequence of spin domains with alternating signs (domain-wall structure). We show that for fixed centered external field and as spin-spin couplings become large, the domain-wall structure scales to a disorder dependent limit that coincides with the infinite disorder fixed point process introduced by D. S. Fisher in the context of zero temperature quantum Ising chains. In particular, our results establish a number of predictions that one can find in [Fisher, Le Doussal and Monthus 2001]. The infinite disorder fixed point process for centered external field is equivalently described in terms of the process of suitably selected extrema of a Brownian trajectory introduced and studied by J. Neveu and J. Pitman [Neveu and Pitman 1989]. This characterization of the infinite disorder fixed point is one of the important ingredients of our analysis., Comment: 49 pages, 4 figures, some changes and corrections with respect to v2

The effect of triangularity on tokamak boundary plasma turbulence is investigated by using global, flux-driven, three-dimensional, two-fluid simulations. The simulations show that negative triangularity stabilizes boundary plasma turbulence, and linear investigations reveal that this is due to a reduction of the magnetic curvature drive of interchange instabilities, such as the resistive ballooning mode. As a consequence, the pressure decay length $L_p$, related to the SOL power fall-off length $\lambda_q$, is found to be affected by triangularity. Leveraging considerations on the effect of triangularity on the linear growth rate and nonlinear evolution of the resistive ballooning mode, the analytical theory-based scaling law for $L_p$ in L-mode plasmas, derived by Giacomin \textit{et al.} [{Nucl. Fusion}, \href{https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-4326/abf8f6}{\textbf{61} 076002} (2021)], is extended to include the effect of triangularity. The scaling is in agreement with nonlinear simulations and a multi-machine experimental database, which include recent TCV discharges dedicated to the study of the effect of triangularity in L-mode diverted discharges. Overall, the present results highlight that negative triangularity narrows the $L_p$ and considering the effect of triangularity is important for a reliable extrapolation of $\lambda_q$ from present experiments to larger devices., Comment: 28 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion

First nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of microtearing modes in the core of a MAST case are performed on two surfaces of the high-collisionality discharge used in Valovi\v{c} et al. Nucl. Fusion 51.7 (2011) to obtain the favorable energy confinement scaling with collisionality, $\tau_E\propto\,\nu_*^{-1}$. On the considered surfaces microtearing modes dominate linearly at binormal length scales of the order of the ion Larmor radius. While the effect of electron collision frequency is moderate in linear simulations, a strong dependence on this parameter is found in nonlinear simulations at $r/a=0.5$, where $r$ and $a$ are the surface and tokamak minor radius, respectively. The dynamics of magnetic islands generated by microtearing modes is analysed, showing that the radial extent of the stochastic region caused by islands overlapping plays an important role in determining the saturation level of the microtearing mode driven heat flux. Local nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations show that the microtearing mode driven heat flux, $Q_e^\mathrm{MTM}$, is largely dominated by magnetic flutter and depends strongly on the magnetic shear, $\hat{s}$. Comparing two surfaces, $r/a=0.5$ and $r/a=0.6$, reveals that $Q_e^\mathrm{MTM}$ is negligible at $r/a=0.5$ ($\hat{s}=0.34$), with the electron temperature gradient driven heat flux, $Q_e^\mathrm{ETG}$, comparable to the experimental electron heat flux, $Q_e^\mathrm{exp}$, while $Q_e^\mathrm{MTM}$ is significantly larger and comparable to $Q_e^\mathrm{ETG}$ and $Q_e^\mathrm{exp}$ at $r/a=0.6$ ($\hat{s}=1.1$). Microtearing modes cause more experimentally significant transport in higher $\hat{s}$ regions and may influence (together with electron temperature gradient modes) the observed scaling of energy confinement time with collisionality (Valovi\v{c} et al. Nucl. Fusion 51.7 (2011)).

The sixth assessment of the international panel on climate change (IPCC) states that "cumulative net CO2 emissions over the last decade (2010-2019) are about the same size as the 11 remaining carbon budget likely to limit warming to 1.5C (medium confidence)." Such reports directly feed the public discourse, but nuances such as the degree of belief and of confidence are often lost. In this paper, we propose a formal account for allowing such degrees of belief and the associated confidence to be used to label arguments in abstract argumentation settings. Differently from other proposals in probabilistic argumentation, we focus on the task of probabilistic inference over a chosen query building upon Sato's distribution semantics which has been already shown to encompass a variety of cases including the semantics of Bayesian networks. Borrowing from the vast literature on such semantics, we examine how such tasks can be dealt with in practice when considering uncertain probabilities, and discuss the connections with existing proposals for probabilistic argumentation.

We consider a forager diffusing via a fractional heat equation and we introduce several efficiency functionals whose optimality is discussed in relation to the L\'evy exponent of the evolution equation. Several biological scenarios, such as a target close to the forager, a sparse environment, a target located away from the forager and two targets are specifically taken into account. The optimal strategies of each of these configurations are here analyzed explicitly also with the aid of some special functions of classical flavor and the results are confronted with the existing paradigms of the L\'evy foraging hypothesis. Interestingly, one discovers bifurcation phenomena in which a sudden switch occurs between an optimal (but somehow unreliable) L\'evy foraging pattern of inverse square law type and a less ideal (but somehow more secure) classical Brownian motion strategy. Additionally, optimal foraging strategies can be detected in the vicinity of the Brownian one even in cases in which the Brownian one is pessimizing an efficiency functional., Comment: Journal of Mathematical Biology

Two-fluid, three-dimensional, flux-driven, global, electromagnetic turbulence simulations carried out by using the GBS code are used to identify the main parameters controlling turbulent transport in the tokamak boundary and to delineate an electromagnetic phase space of edge turbulence. Four turbulent transport regimes are identified: (i) a regime of fully developed turbulence appearing at intermediate values of collisionality and $\beta$, with turbulence driven by resistive ballooning modes, related to the L-mode operation of tokamaks, (ii) a regime of reduced turbulent transport at low collisionality and large heat source, with turbulence driven by drift-waves, related to a high-density H-mode regime, (iii) a regime of extremely large turbulent transport at high collisionality, which is associated with the crossing of the density limit, and (iv) a regime above the ideal ballooning limit at high $\beta$, with global modes affecting the dynamics of the entire confined region, which can be associated with the crossing of the $\beta$ limit. The transition from the reduced to the developed turbulent transport regime is associated here with the H-mode density limit and an analytical scaling law for maximum edge density achievable in H-mode is obtained. Analogously, analytical scaling laws for the crossing of the L-mode density and $\beta$ limits are provided and compared to the results of GBS simulations.

A first-principles scaling law, based on turbulent transport considerations, and a multi-machine database of density limit discharges from the ASDEX Upgrade, JET and TCV tokamaks, show that the increase of the boundary turbulent transport with the plasma collisionality sets the maximum density achievable in tokamaks. This scaling law shows a strong dependence on the heating power, therefore predicting for ITER a significantly larger safety margin than the Greenwald empirical scaling (Greenwald et al, Nucl. Fusion, 28(12), 1988) in case of unintentional H-L transition.