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
  Autumn and Michaelmas Term of 2012

The seminars/group meetings will be on Thursdays at 11:00 am in 501 DWB ("the Seminar Room"), unless otherwise specified below.
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
 Every line in your calculations ends with "=0". You are not making much progress!
Kate Hammett
Let's change the resolution on the Unknown.
Gabe Plunk
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.
Maynard Keynes
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

Wk Date
 Time & place
 Speaker & Topic
 Background reading
 Visitors in town
during the week

3-6 Sept
 Joint EU-US Transport Task Force Meeting, Padua
 Michael Fox joins
 the Plasma Group
as DPhil student
(to work with
Anthony Field
& Alex Schekochihin)

Wed 12 Sept
 11:00am
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
Greg Hammett (Princeton) --- Status report and thoughts on algorithms for edge gyrokinetics
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]
copy of slides
available on request
Greg Hammett
(Princeton)
Thu 13 Sept
 11:00am
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
Alessandro Zocco --- Report from the Varenna meeting
Alex Schekochihin --- Report from the TTF meeting in Padua

...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]

TTF talks and posters
are here; ask AAS
for username and
password

Thu 20 Sept
 11:00am
501 DWB
(map) 		Marc Beurskens (CCFE/JET) --- Confinement in JET with the ITER like Be/W wall: why do we need to study the core turbulent transport
TTF poster;
see also
JET Preprint EFDP12003 		Ferdinand van Wyk
joins the Plasma Group
as DPhil student
(to work with
Edmund Highcock
& Alex Schekochihin)
John Hillesheim
joins CCFE as
Fusion Research
Fellow

Tue 25 Sept
 11:30am
ThPhys 2.2
 Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting:
1) Orbit theory (IGA)
2) MHD equations, flux freezing, conservation laws (AAS)
 1) Helander & Sigmar Ch 6
Cowley-222a L3-7
(and L3-6 of 2003)
[closest to Hazeltine & Waelbroek Ch 2]
2) AAS Part III notes:
L05-sec 1,3-4, M05-sec 9 		Chris Chen
(Berkeley)
Thu 27 Sept
 2:00pm
Culham
K1/0/85		 The 38th UK Fusion Theory Seminar (contact Sarah Newton for further info/access to site).
Chris Chen (Berkeley) --- Plasma turbulence in the solar wind
Peter Hill (Warwick) --- Direct comparisons of global ITG turbulence simulations
of MAST to experiment
0
 Tue 2 Oct
 1:00pm
Culham
Pease Rm
 Special Seminar at Culham (contact Greg Colyer for further info/access to site).
D. Samaddar (ITER) --- The parareal algorithm: application to problems in fusion
 Per Helander
(IPP Greifswald)
4:00pm
ThPhys 2.2
 Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting:
1) Recap of last week's topics
2) What makes plasma a plasma (Debye screening, plasma parameter etc.) (IGA)
3) Lagrangian MHD (marginally needed for waves, but will be useful later on),
MHD waves (AAS)
 2) Intro to any plasma book
Cowley-222a L1
(both versions)
3) AAS Part III notes:
L05-sec 10, M05-sec 11
Thu 4 Oct
 11:00am
501 DWB
(map) 		Per Helander (IPP Greifswald) --- Stellarator and tokamak plasmas: a brief comparison
 PRL 108, 245002 (2012)
I

 Tue 9 Oct
 11:00am
ThPhys 2.2
 Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting:
1) Recap of last week's topics
2) Vlasov-Landau kinetics (with collisions) (IGA)
3) Reduced MHD (AAS)
4) Intro to programming (EGH)
 2) Helander-sec 2.1, 3.1
Kulsrud-sec 8.1-8.5
Landau-sec 1-4, 41
3) AAS Part III notes:
M05-sec 14
M05-ESIII: Q1, Q2, Q3
AAS's Tome-sec 2
 Per Helander
(IPP Greifswald)
Tim Horbury
(Imperial)
joins the Plasma Group
as sabbatical visitor
for MT-2012
Thu 11 Oct
 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
Tim Horbury (Imperial) --- Disentangling temporal and spatial correlations in BES turbulence data: preliminary results
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]
arXiv:1208.5970
PPCF 54, 095012 (2012)
II
 Tue 16 Oct
 11:00am
ThPhys 2.2
 Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting:
1) Recap of last week's topics, especially RMHD (IGA)
2) Intro to programming cont'd (EGH)

Thu 18 Oct
 11:30am
501 DWB
(map) 		Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
Joseph Parker --- Update on the Hermite-Hankel-Fourier gyrokinetics
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]
JFM 664, 407 (2010) [sec 7]
III
 Tue 23 Oct
 10:00am
Culham
Pease Rm
 Special Meeting at Culham (contact Martin Valovic for further info/access to site).
Transport and confinement ideas for the M9 experimental campaign on MAST
3:00pm
ThPhys 2.2
 Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting:
Gyrokinetics in a non-rotating homogeneous slab (IGA)
 IGA's Tome-sec 1-7
(ignore 3.2,3.3,4,6.3,7.1-3)
NB: let u=0 and B, n, T=const
Having done this, read
AAS's Tome-sec 3.1-3.3
Howes-sec 2.1,2.3,2.4 (+Ap. A)
you should find nothing new!
Thu 25 Oct 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
Edmund Highcock --- APS talk structure dry run (including latest results by Young-chul Ghim and Richard Fern)
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]
arXiv:1203.6455
arXiv:1211.2883
IV
 Tue 30 Oct
 11:00am
ThPhys 2.2
 Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting:
1) Recap of last week's topic
2) Landau damping, Langmuir waves and bump-on-tail instabilities (AAS)
 2) AAS notes
(from Imperial PG course)
Landau's paper
 Martin Pessah
(Niels Bohr Institute)
Young-chul Ghim
leaves Oxford
for his new job
at KSTAR
Thu 1 Nov
 11:00am
501 DWB
(map)		 Martin Pessah (Niels Bohr Institute) --- On the dynamical stability of weakly collisional plasmas with thermal and composition gradients
 preprint
ApJ 673, 758 (2008)
ApJ 562, 909 (2001)
V
 Tue 6 Nov
 11:00am
ThPhys 2.2
 Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting:
1) Limiting cases of GK (AAS)
2) Waves and Landau damping in GK (AAS)
(specific task: derive Barnes damping both from general GK dispersion relation
and from KRMHD)
 1) AAS's Tome-sec 1.5,1.6,
4.1-4.6,4.8,5.1-5.5,6.1,6.2.1,
7.1-7.3,7.7
2) Howes-sec 2.6 (+Ap. C&D)
AAS's Tome-sec 6.2.2
 Richard Kerswell
(Bristol)
2:15pm
Dobson Rm
 AOPP seminar:
Richard Kerswell (Bristol) --- Nonlinear sensitivity analysis: triggering turbulence as an exemplar
Thu 8 Nov 11:00am
501 DWB
(map)
 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
Tim Horbury --- Update on the wavelet analysis of BES turbulence data
Michael Fox --- Update on various BES data analyses
Edmund Highcock & Jon Hillesheim --- Report on the APS DPP meeting
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]
arXiv:1208.5970
PPCF 54, 095012 (2012)
arXiv:1211.2883
VI
 Mon 12 Nov
 2:00pm
Culham
HOW Rm
 Special Theory Seminar at Culham (contact Sarah Newton for further info/access to site).
Leonid Zakharov (PPPL) --- The Li wall fusion
Lorenzo Matteini
(Imperial)
Leonid Zakharov
(PPPL)
Tue 13 Nov
 11:00am
ThPhys 2.2
 Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting:
1) Recap of last week's topics
2) MHD equilibria, Grad-Shafranov Equation (AAS)
3) Magnetic field in a torus (IGA)
 2) AAS Part III notes:
L05-sec 7-9
(also M05-sec 10)
L05-ES1: Q9, Q10
Steve's lecture on
tokamak equilibria
Wed 14 Nov
 1:30pm
Culham
Robinson
Rm
 Special Meeting at Culham (contact Martin Valovic for further info/access to site).
Transport and confinement M9 proposals
Thu 15 Nov
 2:30pm
501 DWB
(map)		 Lorenzo Matteini (Imperial) --- Proton temperature anisotropy and magnetic reconnection: coupling kinetic instabilities and current sheet evolution
 PoF 27, 1198 (1984)
GRL 33, L09101 (2006)
preprint available
from speaker on request
Fri 16 Nov
 TBA
Culham
 Experimental Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting (ARF):
CXRS
 Hutchinson sec 8.3,8.4
PRA 35, 3454 (1987)
RSI 77, 10F131 (2006)
VII
 Tue 20 Nov
 11:00am
ThPhys 2.2		 Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting:
1) Magnetic field in a torus (IGA)
2) Neoclassical kinetics (IGA)
 1) IGA's Tome-sec 3.2,4,6,7.2-7.3
(no longer assume
u=0 and B, n, T=const!)
2) IGA's Tome-sec 7.1
 Henrik Latter
(Cambridge)
Thu 22 Nov 2:30pm
501 DWB
(map)		 Henrik Latter (Cambridge) --- Thermal limit cycles in MRI-turbulent accretion disks
 MNRAS 426, 1107 (2012)
New Astron. Rev. 45, 449 (2001)
Fri 23 Nov
 TBA
Culham
 Experimental Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting (ARF):
1) MSE
2) ZEBRA (Ash Patel)
3) RGBCAM, spectroscopy, LINCAM (D-alpha influx)
 1) RSI 79, 10F524 (2008)
RSI 81, 10D738 (2010)
2) RSI 75, 4944 (2004)
3) RSI 75, 4145 (2004)
VIII
 Tue 27 Nov
 11:00am
ThPhys 2.2
 Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting:
Gyrokinetics in a torus (IGA)
 IGA's Tome-sec 5,7.4-7.5
(now in full generality)
 Peter Catto
(MIT)
Wed 28 Nov
 1:00pm
Culham
HOW Rm
 Special Meeting at Culham (contact Ian Chapman for further info/access to site).
Programme (prioritised proposals) for M9
Thu 29 Nov 12:00N
501 DWB
(map)		 Jon Hillesheim (Culham) --- Observation of critical gradient threshold for electron temperature fluctuations in DIIID
 preprint available
from speaker on request
2:00pm
ThPhys 2.2
 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
Michael Fox --- Update on BES analyses: eddy tilt and shear
Tim Horbury --- Update on BES analyses: strange parallel correlations
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]		 arXiv:1208.5970
PPCF 54, 095012 (2012)
arXiv:1211.2883
Fri 30 Nov
 10:00am
Culham
HOW Rm
 Special Day-Long Seminar at Culham to celebrate Jack Connor's 70th birthday (by invitation, contact Martin O'Brien)
10:30 Steve Cowley (CCFE) --- Balooning modes
11:15 Peter Catto (MIT) --- Core and edge transport
11:50 Howard Wilson (York) --- Neoclassical tearing modes
13:45 Chris Bishop (Microsoft Research Cambridge)
14:20 Geoff Cordy --- Scaling laws and their theoretical basis
14:55 Francesco Romanelli (EFDA) --- Theory and modeling for big machines: JET and ITER
15:30 Bill Tang (Princeton) --- High-performance computing in fusion plasma physics
16:05 Jack Connor
9
 Tue 4 Dec
 11:00am
ThPhys 2.2
 Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting:
Gyrokinetics in a torus --- recap/Q&A (IGA)

Thu 6 Dec
 11:00am
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
Nuno Loureiro (IST Lisbon) --- Electron heating in low-beta tearing mode reconnection
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]
 PoP 18, 102309 (2011)
preprint available
from speaker on request
 Francis Casson
(IPP Garching)
Peter Catto
(MIT)
Nuno Loureiro
(IST Lisbon)
10
 Tue 11 Dec 11:00am
Culham
Adams Rm
 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
Stuart Henderson (CCFE) --- Impurities in MAST
Francis Casson (IPP Garching) --- Impurity transport
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]

arXiv:1211.7312
 Francis Casson
(IPP Garching)
2:30pm
Culham
K1/0/38
 JET task force meeting (contact Marc Beurskens for further info/access to site)
Francis Casson (IPP Garching) --- Validation of gyrokinetic models of impurity transport including rotation
Thu 13 Dec
 2:00pm
Culham
K1/0/85		 The 40th UK Fusion Theory Seminar (contact Sarah Newton for further info/access to site).
Ian Abel (Oxford) --- Electron modelling for ion-scale turbulence
Jacob Svennson (CCFE) --- Bayesian thinking: an attempt to explain it
Fri 14 Dec
 TBA
Culham
 Experimental Plasma Physics Study Group Meeting (ARF):
TS (Rory Scannell)
 Hutchinson sec 7.1, 7.2
MAST:
RSI 79, 10E730 (2008)
RSI 81, 10D520 (2010)
PPCF 52 124041 (2010)
ITER:
RSI 79, 10E727 (2008)
11
 Tue 18 Dec
 4:00pm
M. Wood LT
 Colloquium on laser plasma accelerators:
4:00 Simon Hooker --- Introduction to laser-driven plasma accelerators
4.20 Wim Leemans --- Towards 10 GeV with BELLA
4.50 Stefan Karsch --- Development of laser-accelerator-driven x-ray sources at Munich
5.20 Jens Osterhoff --- Plasma accelerators at DESY
 Francis Casson
(IPP Garching)
Chris Chen
(Berkeley)
Thu 20 Dec No seminar

Thu 27 Dec No seminar Chris Chen
(Berkeley)

Seminars in Hilary Term of 2013