Seminars Hilary Term of 2023

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; HT 2021; TT & Summer 2022; Autumn/MT 2022;

Hilary Term of 2023

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
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
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. Francois Rincon
For the sake of fairness, let me mention that some people have objections to this, none of which are particularly valid. Chris Chen
This is more or less right. Perhaps less. Alfred Mallet
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
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)

I don't give a damn about astrophysics, explain to me what is going on. Anatoly Spitkovsky

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

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. Francois Rincon
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
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
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

Now that everyone knows this is the new Pandora's box, they are all going to jump into it. Francois Rincon

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

Wk	Date	Time & place	Speaker & Topic	Background reading	Visitors in town
-1	Tue 3 Jan	No seminar			Sir Steve Cowley (PPPL)
-1	Toby Adkins graduates (on January 5) and becomes a TDoTP postdoc
0	Tue 10 Jan	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by PLAMEN) Plamen Ivanov & Toby Adkins --- An analytical form of the dispersion function for local linear gyrokinetics in a curved magnetic field	arXiv:2212.02654	Ian Abel (Maryland)
I	Tue 17 Jan	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX) Ian Abel (Maryland) --- An asymptotic model for a rapidly rotating mirror	preprint from author on request	Ian Abel (Maryland)
II	Tue 24 Jan	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Journal Club (organised by ALEX) Will Clarke will lead the discussion of the papers by Y. Kosuga et al. "A fate of nonlinear evolution of drift waves: excitation of nonlinear breathers" and by S. Jardin et al. "Ideal MHD limited electron temperature in spherical tokamaks"	PoP 29, 122301 (2022) PRL 128, 245001 (2022)
III	Tue 31 Jan	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX) Nick Lopez --- Metaplectic geometrical optics for ray-based modelling of caustics	PoP 29, 052111 (2022)
IV	Tue 7 Feb	14:00 Freeman Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Journal Club (organised by ARCHIE) Archie Bott will lead the discussion of the recent NIF ignition results
V	Tue 14 Feb	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by JUAN) Juan Ruiz Ruiz --- Phenomenon of beam pinching and consequences for Doppler backscattering experiments
VI	Tue 21 Feb	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Toby Adkins --- Critically balanced ETG turbulence (and other, nastier, stories) + Plasma Journal Club Michael Nastac will lead a brief discussion of the paper by E. Kawamori & Y.-T. Lin "Evidence of entropy cascade in collisionless magnetized plasma turbulence"	JPP 88, 905880410 (2022) +Toby's thesis & new preprint on request Comm. Phys. 5, 338 (2022)
VI	Patrick Reichherzer arrives from Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum to work on a postdoctoral project on cosmic rays with Gianluca Gregori & Alex Schekochihin
VII	Tue 28 Feb	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Patrick Reichherzer (Bochum--->Oxford) --- Mimicking astrophysical cosmic-ray sources with laboratory plasmas	MNRAS 498, 5051 (2020) SNAS 4, 15 (2022) MNRAS 514, 2658 (2022)
VIII	Tue 7 Mar	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Journal Club (organised by PLAMEN) Plamen Ivanov will lead the discussion of the paper by P. Li et al. "On the role of mode resonances in regulating zonal-flow-moderated plasma microturbulence" + its predecessor paper	PoP 25, 012308 (2018) NF 63, 026028 (2023)
9	Tue 14 Mar	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by ARCHIE) Archie Bott --- The failure of Chapman-Enskog theory in high-beta collisional plasmas	preprint on request from author
	Tue 21 Mar	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Yohei Kawazura (Tohoku U) --- 1) Inertial range of magnetorotational turbulence---reduced MHD and ultra-high resolution MHD simulations 2) Hall MHD in relativistically strong mean magnetic ﬁeld	1) JPP 88, 905880311 (2022) 2) PRE 96, 013207 (2017)	Yohei Kawazura (Tohoku U)
	Tue 28 Mar	14:00 Freeman Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting/Tutorial (organised by ALEX) Robbie Ewart --- Universal collisionless distributions vs. conventional cosmic ray theories	Phys. Rep. 872, 1 (2020) JPP 88, 905880114 (2022) JPP 88, 925880410 (2022) +new preprint from author
	Tue 4 Apr	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by JUAN) (Open mic: Leo Turica, Michael Nastac)
-1	Tue 11 Apr	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL) (Open mic)

Trinity Term & Summer of 2023