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, Alex Schekochihin, and Dmitri Uzdensky, 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; HT 2023; TT & Summer
2023; Autumn/MT 2023;
HT 2024;
TT & Summer
2024; Autumn/MT 2024;
HT 2025;
TT & Summer
2025; Autumn/MT 2025
Hilary Term of 2026
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.
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If you know exactly what you are going to do, what
is the point of doing it?
Pablo Picasso 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 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 |
It is
better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong.
Carveth Read
(usually attributed to Maynard Keynes)
Now
that everyone knows this is the new Pandora's
box, they are all going to jump into it.
Francois Rincon This is not
real, it's a Platonic absolute.---The real thing is
more Platonic and more absolute. Alex Schekochihin &
Anthony Field
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[these quotes are mostly from these seminars and the
Vienna meetings]
| Wk |
Date |
Time & place |
Speaker &
Topic |
Background reading |
Visitors in town |
| |
Tue 6 Jan |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ARCHIE)
Informal discussion: "NY resolutions/revolutions in plasma theory, 2026 edition". Contributions welcome! |
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|
| 0 |
Tue 13 Jan |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised by DMITRI)
Benoit Cerutti (Grenoble) --- Electrodynamics of pulsar magnetospheres: current sheets and particle acceleration |
|
Roger Blandford (Stanford) Benoit Cerutti (Grenoble) |
| I |
Tue 20 Jan |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised by ALEX & MICHAEL FITZGERALD)
Rose Blyth (Durham) --- Reduced model describing resonance overlap threshold for fast ion transport by toroidal Alfven eigenmodes |
NF
doi 10.1088/1741-4326/ae2938, in press |
Rose
Blyth (Durham) |
| II |
Tue 27 Jan |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Journal Club (organised by ALEX)
James Edmiston will discuss recently published results on suppression of turbulence by fast ions (Brioschi et al., Ishizawa et al., Du et al. --- links on the right) |
arXiv:2512.18639 Comm. Phys. 8, 486 (2025) PRL 135, 265101 (2025) |
|
| III |
Tue 3 Feb |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
TBA |
|
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| IV |
Tue 10 Feb |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
TBA |
|
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| V |
Tue 17 Feb |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
TBA |
|
|
| Ildar
Khabibullin (LMU-Munich) moves to Oxford
as a Simons PDRA to work with Alex Schekochihin and
Dmitri Uzdensky |
|||||
| VI |
Tue 24 Feb |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Howard Wilson (STEP) --- Delivering a steady-state tokamak plasma for fusion energy |
|
|
| VII |
Tue 3 Mar |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised by PABLO)
Diogo Carvalho (IST Lisbon & DeepMind, London) --- TBA |
|
Diogo
Carvalho (IST Lisbon & DeepMind, London) |
| VIII |
Tue 10 Mar |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised by BARRY)
Anna Lisa Varri (Edinburgh) --- TBA |
|
Anna Lisa
Varri (Edinburgh) |
| 9 |
Tue 17 Mar |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
TBA |
|
|
| |
Tue 24 Mar |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised by ALEX & TUNDE)
Michael Roop (Chalmers) --- TBA/TBC |
|
Roger
Blandford (Stanford), Michael Roop (Chalmers) |
| |
Tue 31 Mar |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
TBA |
|
Roger
Blandford (Stanford) |
| |
Tue 7 Apr |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
TBA |
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Roger
Blandford (Stanford) |
| |
Tue 14 Apr |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
TBA |
|
Roger
Blandford (Stanford) |
| 0 |
Tue 21 Apr |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
TBA |
|
Roger
Blandford (Stanford) |
| |
... |
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| VI
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Tue 2 June |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
TBA |
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Louis Richard (IRF Uppsala)
moves to Oxford as a Vetenskspsradets
international postdoc to work with Alex Schekochihin
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... |
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Mon 6 July |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Toby Adkins (PPPL) --- TBA |
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Toby Adkins (PPPL) |
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