Paul Bonoli specializes in theoretical and computational plasma physics in the areas of radio-frequency (RF) heating and current drive in toroidal confinement devices (tokamaks). He has developed detailed simulation models for RF heating and current drive experiments, especially in the lower hybrid range of frequencies (LHRF). These models include integrated wave propagation, Fokker Planck, and transport calculations and they have been used throughout the international fusion community. More recently he has worked on the development of large parallel frameworks and their application to integrated whole device modeling.

Paul is also quite active in the use of massively parallel computing architectures to perform full-wave electromagnetic field simulations in the LH regime and to study mode conversion processes in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF). This work has been done in close collaboration with John Wright of the PSFC Theory Group. Throughout his career, Paul has had a special interest in the problem of the “lower hybrid (LH) spectral gap” that is ubiquitous to LH current drive experiments. In these experiments, LH waves are observed to damp efficiently and drive current despite the fact that the waves are injected at phase speeds where the population of electrons is too small to observe electron Landau damping.

Early in his career, Paul did work to understand this phenomenon in terms of toroidicity induced variations in the LH wave speed. Most recently he has worked with John Wright to understand this problem via spectral broadening due to diffraction effects that have been seen in LH full-wave simulations.