Post-doctoral contract offer in Electrostatic instabilities and transport in cylindrical magnetized fusion plasmas – theory and simulations

Post-doctoral contract offer

To start before end of 2026

Subject: Electrostatic instabilities and transport in cylindrical 

magnetized fusion plasmas – theory and simulations

General information

Workplace: Nancy, France (if absolutely necessary, remote work will be allowed for a few weeks)
Type of contract: Postdoctoral fixed-term contract, full-time
Contract period: 12 months (further extensions of contract will depend on future funding opportunities)
Expected date of employment: Between July and December 2026 (ideally: October) 
Salary: Depending on experience, between 2597€ and 3246€ monthly before taxes 
Typical monthly cost of life: About €400-500 for lodging, €300 food & misc.
Desired level of education: PhD                 
Experience required: -

Subject description

To ensure the success of magnetic confinement thermonuclear fusion experiments such as ITER, and to design a commercial fusion reactor, we need to overcome a number of remaining scientific challenges. In particular, understanding and controlling instabilities and plasma turbulence is key in the future of fusion energy. The target of current research is a robust predictability of characteristics (linear and non-linear) and the macroscopic impacts of turbulence (mainly transport, or turbulent mixing).

Photograph of the SPEKTRE device. The main vacuum vessel, 6 m long and 90 cm in diameter, houses a plasma confined by 13 copper coils.

Linear devices enable fundamental investigation of edge physics in a cylindrical geometry that facilitates modelisation, instrumentation, measurements, and interpretations. A new linear device, called SPEKTRE, has recently been developed in our laboratory. It is designed to approach the main conditions encountered in the edge of fusion reactors such as ITER. A 2-minutes video presentation of SPEKTRE is available at http://bit.ly/ijl-spektre. It is a rather large device, the cylindrical vessel being almost 1 meter in diameter, and more than 6 meters in length. The magnetic field will range from 0.1 to possibly 0.5 T.

Theoretical modelisation of SPEKTRE plasmas is an opportunity to test and improve the predictive capabilities of existing models. It is also essential to prepare a toolbox of modelisation to be ready to exploit the future experiments.
We will adopt an electrostatic fluid approach. In 2025-2026, we developed a specific module in the BOUT++ framework (C++ language), which is based on a 4-field drift-reduced Braginskii model with cold ions, in cylindrical geometry (with a homogeneous magnetic field). It solves the evolution of fluctuations of density, parallel velocity of electrons, vorticity, and electron temperature. It focuses on dissipative drift-waves for now, but can be adapted to explore other instabilities such as Parallel Velocity Gradient (PVG), slab-ITG, and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities which could be driven or controlled by externally applied radial electric field.
An important remaining objective is to treat adequately boundary conditions (including sinks and sources of particles, energy, and momentum), and equilibrium flows. In addition, it will be interesting to model impurities self-consistently.

In complement to this main approach, the gyrokinetic code GYSELA can be used in a cylindrical limit by taking a very large aspect ratio [T. Rouyer, PhD thesis, U. Lorraine (2026)]. In this configuration, preliminary results show the presence of ITG and PVG instabilities. Simulations can be used to explore the nonlinear coupling between these waves.

In summary, the mission for this postdoctoral work is to perform numerical simulations of magnetized plasmas in cylindrical geometry, and to analyse the results based on linear, quasi-linear and non-linear theories, existing or to be developed.

Work context

The post-doc will work within the “Fusion Plasmas” research group based in Nancy, under the supervision of Dr. Maxime Lesur.
This contract is funded by the Lorraine Université d’Excellence (LUE) initiative and is part of one of the 200 projects selected by Institut Universitaire de France.

About Institut Jean Lamour

The Institut Jean Lamour (IJL) is a joint research unit (UMR 7198) of CNRS and Université de Lorraine. Focused on materials and processes science and engineering, it covers: materials, metallurgy, plasmas, surfaces, nanomaterials and electronics.
It regroups 183 researchers/lecturers, 91 engineers/technicians/administrative staff, 150 doctoral students and 25 post-doctoral fellows. Partnerships exist with 150 companies, and our research groups collaborate with more than 30 countries throughout the world.
Its exceptional instrumental platforms are spread over 4 sites; the main one is a new building located on Artem campus in Nancy.
In this large institute, the employees benefit from efficient administrative and technical services.

Application

Applicants are invited to send a résumé (free format) and cover letter to: [email protected]
if possible before June 29th, 2026.