Alessandro Bortolon

Title
Principal Research Physicist
Bio/Description

Alessandro Bortolon is a principal research physicist of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and head of the PPPL/DIII-D collaboration division. Presently working on the DIII-D tokamak in San Diego, he leads the research on the effects of actively-injected, non-recycling impurities on key aspects of fusion plasmas. He completed his doctoral research at the Swiss Federal Technical Institute focusing on measurement of intrinsic plasma rotation, momentum transport and spontaneous rotation reversals in the TCV tokamak. He subsequently conducted his postdoctoral research at PPPL on the NSTX spherical torus, turning his interest to energetic particle physics, in particular fast-ion transport and fast-ion driven instabilities in presence of externally applied magnetic perturbations. On DIII-D, since 2014, his research on DIII-D focused on the use of controlled injection of low-Z, non-recycling impurities in form of solid granules or powder, as innovative tools to improve energy confinement, mitigate edge localized instabilities or address the issue of divertor power exhaust. There, he also contributed to development of spectroscopic diagnostics for neutrals to study the role of edge particle fueling on the structure of the H-mode pedestal.

Selected Publications