OXFORD PLASMA THEORY GROUP

PLASMA SEMINARS AND GROUP MEETINGS

The style of the seminars will be informal/chaotic/interactive, following the established tradition. The format of the presentations can be a tutorial on a topic of interest, a report on just completed/ongoing/just starting/potentially interesting research projects, a literature review, a lecture by a passing visitor or anything else worthwhile that anyone cares to suggest. The speakers will be interrupted freely and asked to defend themselves. For background reading, only the most relevant or the most recent references are posted; please follow the paper trail from there.

The schedule is subject to change on short notice, but what you see posted here is always up to date; the seminars are also announced via the department's seminar server (group meetings are not). Please email Alex Schekochihin if you would like to receive email updates on these seminars.

"Group meetings to discuss current affairs" will discuss current affairs (ongoing projects, new litearture etc.) as well as feature some presentations that are even more informal than seminars. They are open to all members of the Oxford Plasma Theory Group (which is easy to join). While some expected contributions are pre-announced, everything is TBC and people wishing their work to be discussed can volunteer contributions without prior notice. Unlike for the seminars, there will not be full-spam-list email reminders of the group meetings.

Past seminar database: Autumn 2007; Winter-Spring 2008; Summer 2008; Autumn 2008; HT 2009; TT 2009; Summer 2009; MT 2009; HT 2009; TT 2010; Summer 2010; MT 2010; HT 2011; TT 2011; Summer 2011; MT 2011; HT 2012; TT 2012; Summer 2012; MT 2012; HT 2013; TT & Summer 2013; MT 2013

  Hilary Term of 2014

The seminars/group meetings will be on Thursdays at 11:30 in 501 DWB ("the Seminar Room"), except for the five occasions during term when they are scheduled for 14:30 --- there have been some requests from Culham to meet in the afternoon (there is a train from Culham at 14:01; let us assess this term whether afternoons do in fact prove more convenient/better attended).
Related series: TURBSIM seminars at Culham
Another related series: Astrophysics Brown Bag Seminars


If you know exactly what you are going to do, what is the point of doing it? Pablo Picasso
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong. Maynard Keynes
Every line in your calculations ends with "=0". You are not making much progress! Kate Hammett
We don't do the calculation because we don't know the answer,
we do it because we have a conscience. Bryan Taylor
Let's change the resolution on the Unknown. Gabe Plunk
Let me put it differently: suppose we had a reactor... Per Helander
Working together takes more than one person. Bill Dorland
We can't do ultraviolence to that square bracket. Ian Abel
 Field lines are forever. Bryan Taylor
This is not really an ill-posed problem, it is not a problem at all. Paul Dellar
I am just doing mathematics at the moment, but it is mathematics that has some point. Bryan Taylor
   The equivalent of God in MAST is MHD, which is global and all powerful. Anthony Field
I've got a fishbone coming up. Tim Horbury
We have crossed all the i's and dotted all the t's. Job's a good'un. Ian Abel
Let's not jump in front of the bandwagon! Anonymous
It's not the triviality, it's the emptiness of it that bothers me. Bryan Taylor
This is a very inefficient way of achieving nothing. François Rincon
We Hankel all the way in and then Hankel all the way out. Joseph Parker
For fairness' sake, let me mention that some people have objections to this,
none of which is particularly valid. Chris Chen


Wk Date
 Time & place
 Speaker & Topic
 Background reading
 Comings and goings
(incl. visitors in town)
-1.
 Thu 9 Jan
 No seminar
0.
 Thu 16 Jan
 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
1) Peter Catto (MIT) --- What I am up to in Oxford
2) Edmund Highcock (Oxford) --- New diagnostics module for GS2 (a short demo)
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome] 		2) ask
Edmund
for a tute
 Peter Catto (MIT)
starts his sabbatical
at Oxford
I
 Thu 23 Jan
 2:30pm
Conf Room
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
1) Joseph Parker (Oxford Maths) --- Attenuation of  ultrasound for uncharged particles vs. Landau damping in plasmas
2) Young-chul Ghim (KAIST) --- News and plans from KSTAR
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]
Young-chul Ghim
Jaewook Kim
Taewon Jeong
Sehyun Kwak
(KAIST)
Fri 24 Jan
 2:00pm
K1/0/85
Culham
 The 48th UK Fusion Theory Seminar (contact Eva Havlickova for further info/access to site).
Tony Bell (Oxford ALP) --- Advanced ignition schemes for Inertial Fusion
Jack Connor (CCFE) --- Stochastic magnetic field transport due to beta effects on the electrostatic slab ITG mode
II
 Thu 30 Jan
 2:30pm
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
AOB (BES measurements, MAST simulations)
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]
Young-chul Ghim
Jaewook Kim
Taewon Jeong
Sehyun Kwak
(KAIST)
III.
 Thu 6 Feb
 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
1) Anthony Field (CCFE) --- Update on zonal flow measurements
2) Scott Melville (Oxford) --- Magnetic field evolution in a Braginskii plasma
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]

IV
 Thu 13 Feb
 2:30pm
501 DWB
(map)		 Plasma Seminar:
Istvan Pusztai (MIT) --- Departures from a Maxwellian drive and high mode number kink modes in gyrokinetic simulations
 arXiv:1309.1189
Istvan Pusztai
(MIT)
V
 Thu 20 Feb
 2:30pm
501 DWB
(map)		 Plasma Seminar:
Will Potter (Oxford Astro) --- An accretion disc instability induced by a temperature sensitive α parameter 		ask author
for a preprint
VI.
 Thu 27 Feb
 2:30pm
501 DWB
(map)		 Plasma Seminar:
Alexander Tchekhovskoy (Berkeley) --- Playing with pulsars 		MNRAS 435, L1 (2013)
arXiv:1311.1513
 Alexander Tchekhovskoy
(Berkeley)
VII.
 Thu 6 Mar
 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
George Garston (Oxford Maths) --- Rarefied shear flow over planar boundaries
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]
 Proc. R. Soc. A 464, 2015 (2008)
VIII.
 Thu 13 Mar
 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Plasma Seminar:
Tunde Fulop (Chalmers) --- Flows and avalanches in plasmas
(this will also include a general overview of the work by Prof Fulop's group at Chalmers)
Tunde Fulop
(Chalmers)
Per Helander
(IPP Greifwald)
George Wilkie
(Maryland)
9.
 Mon 17 Mar
 2:00pm
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
George Wilkie (Maryland) --- New results on alpha particle transport modelling
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]
Bill Dorland,
Anjor Kanekar,
George Wilkie
(Maryland)
Ben Dudson
(York)
Thu 20 Mar
 11:30am
501 DWB
(map) 		Plasma Seminar:
1) Ben Dudson (York) --- Recent progress and results in fluid modelling of the tokamak edge using BOUT++
2) Bill Dorland (Maryland) --- Entropy cascade and the gyrofluid closures
 1) Slides from
BOUT++ workshop
BOUT++ website
2) PPPCF 50, 124024 (2008)
PRL 103, 015003 (2009)

Thu 27 Mar
 No seminar (Vienna workshop)
 Peter Catto leaves
Oxford

Thu 3 Apr
 No seminar (Vienna workshop)

Trinity Term and Summer 2014