{
  "abstract": "Tokamak disruptions may lead to the acceleration of some electrons to relativistic energies. These so-called runaway electrons (REs) can multiply exponentially via knock-on collisions with thermal electrons. As the resulting RE avalanche is exponentially sensitive to the pre-disruption plasma current, multi-MA RE beams may form in large future devices, risking severe localized wall damage. In this work, an energy and momentum conserving knock-on collision operator is implemented in the 3D nonlinear MHD code JOREK for the full-f relativistic hybrid fluid-kinetic model that describes the REs using the particle-in-cell (PiC) approach both for full-orbit and drift-kinetic markers, which will enable accurate modeling of the RE phase-space dynamics in realistic 3D electromagnetic fields. Such a self-consistent treatment of the RE avalanche and competing losses in the stochastic fields of MHD-active plasmas is required to further the understanding of RE transport and phase-space dynamics in self-consistent interaction with the 3D plasma evolution, which is needed for developing reliable predictions as well as reliable mitigation methods. To make such novel high-fidelity simulations computationally viable, a resampling technique was also implemented to restrict the number of markers. The avalanche model is verified using analytical expressions from literature and applied to a JET-like termination scenario, demonstrating its applicability to realistic 3D MHD active scenarios. Future work on porting to accelerated high-performance computing systems will be needed to cross the long time scales involved, e.g., in periodic termination and re-avalanching that could occur in large devices like ITER.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2607.24602",
  "author_total": 6,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Fiona Wouters"
    },
    {
      "name": "Hannes Bergström"
    },
    {
      "name": "Matthias Hoelzl"
    },
    {
      "name": "Guido T. A. Huijsmans"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jan van Dijk"
    },
    {
      "name": "the JOREK team"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9388b32mmfpah.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2607.24602",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "9388b32mmfpah",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.24602",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "physics.plasm-ph"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3106|Magnetic confinement fusion research"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7171533047",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.24602",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-06",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9388b32mmfpah.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:27:22Z",
      "native_id": "2607.24602",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.24602"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:physics.plasm-ph",
      "subfield": "plasma"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Implementation and verification of the avalanche source in a 3D full-f particle-in-cell model of relativistic electrons for studies of tokamak disruptions",
  "title_text": "Implementation and verification of the avalanche source in a 3D full-f particle-in-cell model of relativistic electrons for studies of tokamak disruptions",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-06T18:21:10Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9388b32mmfpah",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}