Development of a synthetic diagnostic for turbulence simulation analysis

Plasma turbulence in the boundary region of magnetic confinement fusion devices is one of the open problems in fusion plasma physics. Turbulent transport strongly affects particle and heat losses at the plasma boundary and therefore plays a key role in determining the performance and operational limits of present and future fusion reactors. It is therefore necessary to have a correct description of turbulence in the boundary plasma for predicting plasma-wall interactions and for improving confinement properties in next-generation devices. Plasma turbulence in the boundary region is currently investigated using drift-reduced two-fluid models and, more recently, gyrokinetic ones. They rely on different approximations to provide a reasonable description of plasma dynamics while keeping manageable computational costs. To compare their results to experimental measurements and verify their validity, synthetic diagnostics are required. This thesis project focuses on the implementation of a synthetic diagnostic that reproduces the insertable array of Langmuir probes available in the RFX-mod device. The diagnostic provides ion saturation current and floating potential signals at different radial and poloidal positions. The synthetic diagnostic is applied to the simulation results of advanced two-fluid and gyrokinetic codes, therefore allowing for a direct validation against experimental measurements. An overall good qualitative agreement is found across simulation results and experimental measurements, although some quantitative discrepancy suggests the need of improving both models and their implementation.