Bio

Dr. Florian M. Laggner is an experimental plasma physicist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at North Carolina State University, where he leads the Fusion Plasma Auxiliaries Characterization Laboratory (FPAC LAB). He earned his Ph.D. from TU Wien in 2017, including a research secondment at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. His doctoral work investigated inter-edge localized mode (ELM) pedestal evolution in the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak. Following his Ph.D., Dr. Laggner joined the Plasma Control Group at Princeton University as a postdoctoral researcher, where he contributed to the implementation of a real-time Thomson scattering diagnostic for NSTX-U and the Large Helical Device (LHD). In 2019, he transitioned to Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), where he was based at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility. There, he contributed to the installation of the LLAMA diagnostic to measure edge neutral density profiles and conducted research on pedestal control, edge physics, and wall conditioning, including work on KSTAR.

Area(s) of Expertise

Magnetic Confinement Fusion: High-temperature plasma physics in tokamaks and stellarators with focus on plasma boundary, neutral particle effects, wall conditioning and H-mode pedestal.
Fusion Heating Systems: Radio frequency neutral beam ion sources.
Plasma Facing Materials: Additively manufactured tungsten.
High temperature plasma diagnostics: Lithium beam emission spectroscopy, Thomson scattering, Hydrogen Lyman-α (VUV) spectroscopy.

Publications

• AMAROK: A Radio Frequency Development Platform for High-Power, Full-Scale Positive Ion Sources for DIII-D Neutral Beam Injectors , IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (2026)
• Development and Validation of a Modular Actively Cooled High-Heat-Flux Test Stand Utilizing an Electron-Beam Powder Bed Fusion Platform , SSRN Electronic Journal (2026)
• Fluid-kinetic modeling of a high power density radio frequency inductively coupled positive hydrogen ion source , Plasma Sources Science and Technology (2026)
• AMAROK: A Novel Single-Turn Multi-Coil Antenna Demonstration Setup for DIII-D Neutral Beam Injector Upgrade , (2025)
• Combined Influence of Rotation and Scrape-Off Layer Drifts on Recycling Asymmetries in Tokamak Plasmas , Physical Review Letters (2025)
• Design and Engineering of LUPIN: A Test-Bed Radio-Frequency Ion Source for Enhanced Neutral Beam Injection on DIII-D , Fusion Science & Technology (2025)
• Design and Study of Inductively Coupled Plasma Chamber Components Using the SupRISE Test Device at DIII-D , Fusion Science & Technology (2025)
• Impact of ionization peak location on measured opaqueness in DIII-D H-mode plasmas , Nuclear Fusion (2025)
• Impact of the isotope effect on divertor detachment and pedestal structure in DIII-D , Nuclear Fusion (2025)
• Production- and Transport-Limited Fluxes in Inductively Coupled Ion Sources for Neutral Beam Injectors , (2025)

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