Seminars Hilary Term of 2022

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. "Plasma group meetings (or journal clubs)" 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. 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. The seminars and group meetings are organised by Michael Barnes and Alex Schekochihin, please contact them with any queries or if you wish to present something.

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; HT 2016; TT & Summer 2016; Autumn/MT 2016; HT 2017; TT & Summer 2017; Autumn/MT 2017; HT 2018; TT & Summer 2018; MT 2018; HT 2019; TT & Summer 2019; MT 2019; HT 2020; TT & Summer 2020; MT 2020; HT 2021; TT & Summer 2021; Autumn/MT 2021;

Hilary Term of 2022

The seminars/group meetings will be on Tuesday at 14:00 in the Simpkins Lee Room, Beecroft Building, except where indicated otherwise below, in red.
It will be possible to join these meetings (when they are held in SL Room) on ZOOM --- details available from Alex on request.
Those who join these meetings on ZOOM are asked keep their video cameras on.
The ZOOM system in Simpkins Lee Room does not display a list of participants whose cameras are off. It is not germane to these informal meetings to have invisible listeners of whom those present in the room are unaware, so if you are unable or unwilling to turn on your camera, you cannot join the meeting.
Here is a list of all Physics seminars.

If you know exactly what you are going to do, what is the point of doing it? Pablo Picasso
He goeth furthest who knows not whither he is going. Oliver Cromwell

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
We have crossed all the i's and dotted all the t's. Job's a good'un. Ian Abel
Let us not jump in front of the bandwagon! Alex Schekochihin
It's not the triviality, it's the emptiness of it that bothers me. Bryan Taylor
Never take 0 for an answer. Alex Schekochihin
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 the sake of fairness, let me mention that some people have objections to this, none of which are 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
What is the point? The point is not the point! Anonymous
This is why I am presenting this here and nowhere else: nothing is solved! Ian Abel
This calculation is not intellectual masturbation: there's no orgasm. Anonymous
Previous studies of this problem have been either unsatisfactory or limited in scope.---What is the difference between these?---This means either wrong or irrelevant. Anatoly Spitkovsky, Michael Medvedev & Steve Cowley (in conversation)

It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong. Carveth Read (usually attributed to Maynard Keynes)

I don't give a damn about astrophysics, explain to me what is going on. Anatoly Spitkovsky
Have you subtracted the baby with the bathwater? Steve Balbus
This is not rigour, unless you mean rigor mortis. Ian Abel
I wouldn't say these are theoretical arguments... Let's just call them arguments. François Rincon
You can never be too happy with the state of your closure. Amitava Bhattacharjee
For this plot, 1 is 6.--- Weeell, not even. Steve Cowley & Steve Balbus
This qualitative explanation is not of sufficient quality. Eugene Churazov
If you mean it seriously, this is actually a very good question. Minhyong Kim
This paper is a tour de farce. Ian Abel
What is modelling? You run a simulation, you compare. If it coincides, great! If it doesn't coincide, fuck! Felix Parra
We are stuck at x=0. Felix Parra
I have seen papers where the student wasn't the problem. Michael Hardman
There has been a lot of fascinating work on this subject, most of it kind of boring. Philipp Kempski
So now you want us to drop everything we are doing and start worrying about what the big questions are?! Ian Abel
Oh dear, I thought I had some conclusions. Nuno Loureiro
I've got my little fingers inside this plasma. Steve Cowley
Words will play a big role in this talk. Dmitri Uzdensky
Everything that can be done should be done---and that's the astrophysical attitude. Michael Medvedev
What I will talk about is not low-hanging fruit. A lot of people have looked at this. There is no fruit here at all.---What about sour grapes? Michael Medvedev & Nuno Loureiro
In order to have a disappointment, you first have to have an appointment. Alex Schekochihin
I can follow what you are doing here only in the broadest sense. Sir Steve Cowley
In our experiment, we observed strong absence of magnetic energy. Archie Bott
Much as I somewhat hate this approach... Peter Davidson
Your infinity is my zero. Mantas Abazorius
If I had known the outcome of this calculation, I would never have done it. Michael Hardman

[these quotes are mostly from Oxford plasma seminars and the Vienna meetings]

Wk	Date	Time & place	Speaker & Topic	Background reading	Visitors in town
-1	Tue 4 Jan	No seminars (Orthodox Christmas + Lockdown Watch)			Nuno Loureiro (MIT)
0	Tue 11 Jan	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Toby Adkins -- Electromagnetic instabilities and plasma turbulence driven by electron-temperature gradient	arXiv:2201.05670
0	Thu 13 Jan	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) John Goree (U of Iowa) --- Dusty plasma experiments: strong coupling, shocks, and testing theories of statistical physics	Nature Phys. 14, 21 (2018)
I	Tue 18 Jan	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Michael Hardman --- Progress on the electromagnetic electron response theory Thermodynamics of Weakly Nonlinear Langmuir Waves, Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking, and Nambu–Goldstone Mode Generation	electrostatic preliminary arXiv:2108.02822 +new preprint coming up	Chris Hamilton (IAS)
I	Thu 20 Jan	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Eva Kostadinova (Auburn U) --- Anomalous electron diffusion in magnetic islands and stochastic magnetic fields		Chris Hamilton (IAS)
II	Tue 25 Jan	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Jason Parisi (Princeton) --- 3D ETG turbulence in a tokamak pedestal	preprint available from author on request
II	Thu 27 Jan	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Troy Carter (UCLA) --- Turbulence and transport in the Large Plasma Device: shear suppression, nonlinear instability and electromagnetic turbulence
III	Tue 1 Feb	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Journal Club (organised by ALEX) Denis St-Onge will discuss H. Chen et al. "Excitation of zonal flow by intermediate-scale toroidal electron temperature gradient turbulence", NF 61, 066017 (2021) Plamen Ivanov will discuss X. Garbet et al. "Wave trapping and ExB staircases", PoP 28, 042302 (2021) Leonard Turica will discuss L. Bentkamp et al. "The statistical geometry of material loops in turbulence", arXiv:2106.11622
III	Thu 3 Feb	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Sophia Henneberg (IPP Greifswald) --- Advanced approaches in stellarator optimization
IV	Tue 8 Feb	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL) Denis St-Onge --- Global-local gyrokinetic simulations of turbulence in tokamak plasmas using STELLA	arXiv:2201.01506
IV	Thu 10 Feb	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Joaquim Loizu (EPFL) --- New horizons for stellarator optimization via fast 3D MHD equilibrium and stability calculations with islands and chaos
V	Tue 15 Feb	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX) Baptiste Frei (EPFL) --- Flux-tube electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulations using a moment approach with advanced collision operators	arXiv:2201.02860 arXiv:2104.11480
V	Thu 17 Feb	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Lorenzo Sironi (Columbia) --- Fast and furious: reconnection and turbulence in magnetically-dominated astrophysical plasmas
VI	Mon 21 Feb	11:30 SL Room	ALP Seminar: Dustin Froula (Rochester) --- Measuring electron distribution functions with Thomson scattering	PRL 127, 015001 (2021)	Dustin Froula (Rochester)
	Tue 22 Feb	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Robbie Ewart --- Strange relaxation in collisionless plasmas (or Fun answers to questions that nobody asked about a plasma that doesn't exist)	arXiv:2201.03376
	Thu 24 Feb	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Paola Mantica (IFP-CNR, Milan) --- Tokamak turbulence stabilization by electromagnetic effects and fast ions
VII	Tue 1 Mar	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL) Juan Ruiz Ruiz --- Effect of fast ions on turbulence
VII	Thu 3 Mar	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Rachel Bielajew (MIT) --- Exploring edge turbulence in the low and improved confinement regimes at the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak
VIII	Tue 8 Mar	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Michael Nastac --- Constant-flux turbulence in phase space	preprint coming up; see sec 11 of Alex's KT Notes for background
VIII	Thu 10 Mar	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Ian Hutchinson (MIT) --- Electron holes in collisionless plasmas: how long do these common nonlinear structures last?	arXiv:2112.04272
9	Tue 15 Mar	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by MICHAEL) José-Manuel Garcia Regaña (CIEMAT) --- Turbulent transport of impurities in stellarators	NF 61, 116019 (2021) JPP 87, 855870103 (2021)
9	Thu 17 Mar	14:00 YouTube	"White House Summit: Developing a Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy" (no JPP Colloquium this week)
10	Tue 22 Mar	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) David Hosking --- Emergence of long-range correlations and thermal spectra in forced turbulence (tbc)	arXiv:2202.00462	Steve Cowley (Princeton) Bill Dorland (UMD/PPPL)
	Wed 23 Mar	17:00 Oxford Martin School (registration required)	A special talk at Oxford Martin School: Sir Steve Cowley (Princeton) --- Getting to a fusion pilot plant: a perspective from the US
	Thu 24 Mar	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Axel Brandenburg (NORDITA) --- Primordial magnetic fields
	Tue 29 Mar	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by JUAN RUIZ) Jeronimo Garcia (CEA) --- Towards enhanced performance in fusion plasmas via turbulence suppression by energetic ions	PRL 111, 155001 (2013) NF 55, 053007 (2015) PoP 25, 055902 (2018) NF 59, 124001 (2019) arXiv:2010.07977	Troy Carter (UCLA) Bill Dorland (UMD/PPPL) Per Helander (Greifwald) Luis Silva (IST lisbon)
	Thu 31 Mar	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Vladimir Yankov (Ergophos LLC) --- Improvement of confinement in tokamaks by a weakening the poloidal magnetic field at the boundary, invariants, and attractors
	Tue 5 Apr	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by DAVID HOSKING) Santiago Benavides (Warwick) --- Phase transitions in geophysical turbulence Work in the last few decades has shown that the theory of turbulence due to Kolmogorov cannot describe turbulent behavior in the context of geophysical and astrophysical flows, which include the effects of rotation, stratification, ionization and large aspect ratios. In particular, recent work shows that turbulent behavior in geophysical contexts undergoes an unexpected phase transition as parameters such as rotation are varied, going from a state that forms large-scale coherent structures to one that only forms small-scale incoherent turbulent fluctuations. In this talk, I will show some of my work studying these transitions using direct numerical simulations and discuss the many questions that arise from these observations.		Troy Carter (UCLA) Santiago Benavides (Warwick)
	4-8 Apr		TTF Meeting & Sherwood Meeting in Santa Rosa, CA
	Thu 7 Apr	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Tom Blackburn (Gothenburg) --- Laser-matter interactions at ultra-high intensity: how do we simulate them and what can experiments tell us?
	Tue 12 Apr	No group meeting: Easter week lull			Claude Bardos (Paris 7) Anatoly Spitkovsky (Princeton)
	Thu 14 Apr	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Anatoly Spitkovsky (Princeton) --- TBA		Claude Bardos (Paris 7) Anatoly Spitkovsky (Princeton)

Trinity Term of 2022