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

  Michaelmas Term of 2014

The seminars/group meetings will be on Thursdays at 11:30 in 501 DWB ("the Seminar Room"), except where indicated otherwise below.


If you know exactly what you are going to do, what is the point of doing it? Pablo Picasso
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong. Maynard Keynes
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'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


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

Fri 5 Sept
 11:00am
Culham
 Group meeting to discuss current affairs/Culham Turbulent Transport Topical Meeting:
EUROfusion progress meeting: A. Field is organising the agenda:
updates by A. Field, A. Schekochihin, E. Highcock, G. Colyer, F. Parra
Chris Reynolds
(Maryland)
arrives to spend MT
on sabbatical

Sept 8-11
 Culham
 EU-US TTF Meeting
 Troy Carter
(UCLA)

Thu 18 Sept
 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
1) Alex Schekochihin --- ETG + KAW: some ideas on the electromagnetic electron-scale turbulence
2) AOB
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]

-2
 Thu 25 Sept
 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Plasma Seminar:
Alex Schekochihin (Oxford) --- Stratified turbulence, heating and turbulent diffusion in galaxy clusters 		ApJ 788, L13 (2014)
Nature preprint
available
on request
-1
 Thu 2 Oct
 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Plasma Seminar:
Swadesh Mahajan (UT Austin)--- Nonlinear effective quantum mechanics: A theory of fluidons
 IJTP doi 10.1007/s10773-014-2341-0
 Swadesh Mahajan
(UT Austin)
Jonathan Citrin
(Cadarache)
Fri 3 Oct
 11:00am
Culham		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs/Culham Turbulent Transport Topical Meeting:
A. Field and M. Barnes are organising the agenda
...
0
 Thu 9 Oct
 No seminar
 Jonathan Citrin
(Cadarache)

Michael Hardman
(adviser F. Parra),
Aneesh Naik
(advisers S. Balbus
and A. Schekochihin)
and Chris Staines
(adviser A. Schekochihin)
join as MPhys students;
Alessandro Geraldini
(adviser F. Parra)
joins as DPhil student
I
 Thu 16 Oct 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
1) Michael Hardman --- Measuring zonal flows with BES: velocimetry and coherency analysis of synthetic data
2) AOB
...
[everything TBC; unannounced contributions welcome]		 Michael's report
is available
from him
or from A. Field
on request
 Daniel Dunai
(Budapest)
II
 Thu 23 Oct 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Room is booked but I won't be there --- please self-organise!

Fri 24 Oct
 15:00
Pease Rm
Culham
 Culham Turbulent Transport Topical Meeting:
J. Hillesheim (JET) --- Highlights on turbulence from IAEA-2014
(organised by A. Field)
III
 Thu 30 Oct 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Plasma Seminar:
(1) Grzegorz Kowal (Sao Paulo) --- Fast magnetic reconnection in weakly turbulent astrophysical environments
(2) Diego Falceta-Goncalves (St Andrews & Sao Paulo) --- Brief comments on collisionless plasma effects in the amplification of cosmological seed magnetic fields
 (1) arXiv:1407.6356
(2) ApJ 781, 84 (2014)
 Diego Falceta-Goncalves
(St Andrews & Sao Paulo)
Grzegorz Kowal
(Sao Paulo)
IV
 Thu 6 Nov
 11:30am
501 DWB
(map)		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
Matt Kunz (Princeton) --- Some updates:
(1) Kinetic turbulence with PIC
(2) Anisotropic-pressure KRMHD and GK
 (2) preprint from author
on request
 Matt Kunz
(Princeton)
V
 Fri 14 Nov
 11:00am
Culham		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs/Culham Turbulent Transport Topical Meeting:
A. Field and M. Barnes are organising the agenda
Debasmita Samaddar --- Acceleration of non-linear GS2 simulations using the ParaReal algorithm 
Jon Hillesheim --- High-k spectrum from DBS
Greg Colyer --- Summary of relevant contributions at the APS DPP Conference
Matt Kunz
(Princeton)
VI
 Thu 20 Nov
 14:30
501 DWB
(map)		 Room is booked if someone wants to organise a meeting, but I won't be there

VII
 26-27
Nov
 9:00am
Culham
 GS2 development meeting
organised by C. Roach (contact him for details)
VIII
 Tue 2 Dec
 14:00
R. Hooke
Room
 Group meeting to discuss current affairs:
Justin Ball --- Up-down asymmetric tokamaks
 PPCF 56, 095014 (2014)
 Naoki Sato (Tokyo)
Thu 4 Dec
 14:30
501 DWB
(map)		 Plasma Seminar:
Naoki Sato (U of Tokyo) --- A stochastic model of inward diffusion in magnetospheric plasmas
9
 Fri 12 Dec
 11:00am
Culham		 Group meeting to discuss current affairs/Culham Turbulent Transport Topical Meeting:
A. Field and M. Barnes are organising the agenda
...

10
 Thu 18 Dec




Thu 25 Dec
 Merry Xmas!

Hilary Term of 2015