Chris Holland and Vincent Chan attended the 2008 SciDAC conference in Seattle from July 13-17. Chris Holland presented a talk on synthetic diagnostics and the new TGYRO code, "Validating Simulations of Core Tokamak Turbulence: Current Status and Future Directions."

Prof. Herb Berk from the Institute of Fusion Studies of the University of Texas at Austin is visiting GA from July 28 through August 8 to work with GA and DIII-D physicists on the interpretation of internal Alfven eigenmode measurements from Alfven cascade mode observations in DIII-D.

The dedicated monitoring web portal for the SWIM (Simulation of RF Wave Interactions with Magnetohydrodynamics) project is now up and running. SWIM is a DoE SciDAC research project charged with integrating disparate physics codes for higher fidelity simulation of magnetically confined plasma. It has physics, math and computer science research components. The web portal http://swim.gat.com:8000, designed and developed by the Data Analysis and Applications Group, communicates with large simulation codes running on computers at ORNL and PPPL and monitors the status of ongoing simulations. The portal also has the capability of real time data visualization and instant messaging-based status notification. The web portal was demonstrated and well received by the SWIM review panel in June.

A closed form for the velocity difference between impurity ions and the main ions in neoclassical theory has been obtained in terms of the pressure and temperature differences. This difference has important diagnostic implications since typically the impurity velocities are measured and the main ion rotation inferred from this. Although the individual velocities cannot be analytically evaluated to the required order in inverse aspect ratio, the difference in a two ion species plasma can be calculated using an approach similar to the one used for bootstrap current. The formula has also been simplified to the case of trace impurity ions, which then is applicable to any number of trace impurities. The resulting difference between two different trace impurity ions in an otherwise pure plasma can be checked against experiments.