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; HT 2014; TT & Summer 2014; MT 2014; HT 2015; TT & Summer 2015; MT 2015

  Hilary Term of 2016

The seminars/group meetings will be on Thursday at 11:30 in 501 DWB, except where indicated otherwise below.

If you know exactly what you are going to do, what is the point of doing it? Pablo Picasso

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, this 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
 It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong. Maynard Keynes
 
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
Yes, Steve, you have always known what we have only just figured out. Alfred Mallet
This is more or less right. Perhaps less. Alfred Mallet
You go ahead with your argument. I'll think. Steve Cowley
Too simple? At the end of my talk, you will beg for simplicity! Andrey Beresnyak
The point is not the point! Anonymous
Why do these plasmas sometimes explode? And sometimes not.
This is a nonlinear issue. Steve Cowley


Wk Date
 Time & place
 Speaker & Topic
 Background reading
 Comings and goings
(incl. visitors in town)

Thu 7 Jan
 11:30
501 DWB
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL)
New Year resolutions
Tom White joins ALP
as PDRA
(with G. Gregori
and A. Schekochihin)
0
 11-12 Jan
 Wolfson
College
 Oxford-CNRS Workshop on Magnetic and Inertial Confinement Energy Research
(organised by P. Norreys)
 Per Helander (IPP Greifswald)
on sabbatical till end of HT
Wed 13 Jan
 13:30
HOW Rm
JET
 EUROfusion Science Meeting on  Recent developments in fusion theory and their impact in interpreting experimental observations (organised by M. Romanelli)
13.30 M. Romanelli: Introduction
13.40 F. Militello: Understanding density decay lengths and particle exhaust in tokamaks from a theoretical perspective
14.10 P. Rodrigues: Predicting the stability of alpha-particle–driven Alfvén Eigenmodes in burning plasmas
14.40 M. Muraglia: Self-consistent interaction between MHD island and turbulence
15.10 J. Ball: Transport in tokamaks with tilted elliptical flux surfaces
Thu 14 Jan
 11:30
501 DWB
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
New Year resolutions: continued
I
 Thu 21 Jan
 11:30
501 DWB. 		Plasma Group Meeting (organised by FELIX)
New Year resolutions: completed

Fri 22 Jan
 14:00
Sciama LT
 Theoretical Physics Colloquium:
Per Helander (IPP Greifswald) --- Hamiltonian mechanics in 3D magnetic fields and the role of "hidden symmetries"
II

 Thu 28 Jan
 11:30
501 DWB.		 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by FELIX)
Michael Fox and Ferdinand van Wyk --- Update on MAST turbulence simulations and correlation measurements in simulated boxes
 M. Fox's preprint
available from
him on request
Fri 29 Jan
 15:30
M. Wood
LT
 Physics Colloquium:
Per Helander (IPP Greifswald) --- Stellarators, fusion energy, and the Wendelstein 7-X experiment
III
 Thu 4 Feb
 11:30
501 DWB		 Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Tom White --- Experimental laboratory astrophysics
 Nature Photonics 9, 274 (2015)
Physics Reports 601, 1 (2015)
 Sebastien Fromang
(CEA)
Mark Sherlock
(Imperial)
Fri 5 Feb
 14:00
Sciama LT
 Theoretical Physics Colloquium:
Raju Venugopalan (Brookhaven NL) --- How hot glue becomes a nearly perfect fluid: the problem of thermalisation in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions
Fri 5 Feb
 14:00
JET
K1/0/38
 UK Fusion Theory Meeting (contact Nick Walkden with inquiries and requests for Culham access)
14:00 Sophia Henneberg (York) --- Filamentary plasma eruptions in tokamaks
15:00 Bogdan Hnat (Warwick) --- Multi-spacecraft measurement of turbulence within a magnetic reconnection jet
IV
 Thu 11 Feb
 11:30
501 DWB.
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL/FELIX)
Greg Colyer --- Update on ETG turbulence

V
 Thu 18 Feb
 11:30
501 DWB.
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by FELIX)
Michael Fox --- New results on sheared turbulence


Fri 19 Feb
 14:00
Sciama LT
 Theoretical Physics Colloquium:
Ard Louis (Oxford TP) --- Does simplicity naturally arise from the algorithmic nature of the world?
VI
 Thu 25 Feb
 11:30
501 DWB.
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL)
Edmund Highcock --- Update on TRINITY results

Fri 26 Feb
 13:00
JET
K1/0/85
 UK Fusion Theory Meeting (contact Nick Walkden with inquiries and requests for Culham access)
13:00 Nick Walkden (CCFE) --- Scrape-off layer filament dynamics in 2D and 3D
14:00 Tom Swinburne (CCFE) --- Using Zwanzig’s projection operator to understand stochastic defect dynamics
VII
 Thu 3 Mar
 11:30
501 DWB
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
Per Helander, Marek Strumik and Alex Schekochihin --- Constraints on magnetic field evolution in pressure-anisotropic MHD
Bruce Lipschultz
(York)
Oliver Allanson
(St Andrews)
Vasil Bratanov
(IPP Garching)
Fri 4 Mar
 14:00
Sciama LT
 Theoretical Physics Colloquium:
Mike Cates (Lucasian Professor, Cambridge) --- Time reversal symmetry breaking and directed assembly of active colloids
VIII
 Thu 10 Mar
 11:30
501 DWB
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL)
Free discussion
Per Helander (IPP Greifswald)
completes his sabbatical
9
 Thu 17 Mar
 11:30
501 DWB 		Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
Archie Bott --- Transport of energetic particles through tangled magnetic fields in plasma turbulence experiments
 		RSI 83, 101301 (2012)
arXiv:1603.08617
 Alfred Mallet
(UNH)

Thu 24 Mar
 No seminar, happy Easter!
 Daniel Dunai
(WRC, Budapest)

Thu 31 Mar
 11:30
501 DWB.
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by FELIX)
Free discussion, news and views
Daniel Dunai
(WRC, Budapest)

Trinity Term and Summer of 2016