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. "Plasma group meetings" 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, Felix Parra 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 and Michaelmas Term of 2017

The seminars/group meetings will be on Thursday at 11:30 in 501 DWB, except where indicated otherwise below.
Note also the ALP Seminars (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

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! 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 the sake of fairness, let me mention that some people have objections to this, none of which are particularly valid. Chris Chen
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong. Maynard Keynes 

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
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
There are many big Buts here... I like big Buts. 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 and Steve Cowley (in conversation)
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 and Steve Balbus
Это качественное объяснение недостаточно качественное. Eugene Churazov
If you mean it seriously, this is actually a very good question. Minhyong Kim
[these quotes are mostly from Oxford plasma seminars and Vienna meetings]

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

Thu
Sept 7
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL)
Yohei Kawazura --- Update on the i-e heating problem in (hybrid) GK



Thu
Sept 14
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
Francois Rincon (Toulouse) --- Coherent structures and how to find them (informal tutorial)
JFM 731, 1 (2013)
A&A 575, A14 (2015)
A&A 598, A87 (2017)
Matt Kunz
(Princeton)
Francois Rincon
(Toulouse)

Thu
Sept 21.
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Seminar (organised by FELIX)
Brian Applebe (Imperial) --- The challenge of measuring ion temperature in Inertial Confinement Fusion
Nature Phys. 12, 435 (2016)
PoP 21, 072701 (2014)

-1
Thu
Sept 28.
No seminar



0
Thu
Oct 5
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
1) Steve Balbus --- General relativistic thin disc evolution
2) Yohei Kawazura --- Proposal: a kinetic study of extraction of a black hole's rotational energy in spacetime shearing box
1) MNRAS 471, 4832 (2017)
2) Ask Yohei
for a short write up
& refrence list
Mantas Abazorius &
Oliver Beeke join the group
as DPhil students
to work with F. Parra &
M. Barnes, respectively
I
Thu
Oct 12
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
Alex Schekochihin --- A tutorial on nonlinear plasma stability, free energy, available energy and all that
KT lecture notes, sec 5.2
JPP 83, 715830401 (2017)
Fowler's review
Toby Adkins rejoins
the group
as MMathPhys student
to work with
A. Schekochihin
II
Thu
Oct 19
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Daniel Verscharen (UCL) --- Fluctuations in the collisionless solar wind: MHD or kinetic?
The fast solar wind is a collisionless magnetised plasma. Therefore, deviations from thermodynamic equilibrium can develop, and a kinetic description of the plasma becomes necessary. I will discuss the properties of the dispersion relations and polarisation properties of kinetic slow modes and magnetohydrodynamic slow modes. I compare theoretical predictions for the fluctuations in the three lowest velocity moments (density, bulk velocity, and pressure) of the proton distribution function associated with large-scale compressive slow modes to solar-wind observations at 1 au. Surprisingly, the predictions from magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) are in a better agreement with the data than the kinetic predictions, even at times when the collisionality of the plasma is low. This unexpected result suggests that some unknown kinetic process assumes the role of collisions in suppressing fluctuations in heat flux. Possible candidates for such a process include fluctuating-moment effects, wave-particle scattering on small-scale fluctuations, and anti-phase-mixing.
ApJ 840, 106 (2017)
Daniel Verscharen
(UCL)
III
Thu
Oct 26
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
Nicolas Christen --- Reconstruction of turbulence-driven core rotation profiles in tokamaks
(transfer exam presentation, examiners F. Parra & A. Schekochihin)
NF 51, 094027 (2011)
PRL 106, 175004 (2011)
arXiv:1207.4419
PoP 2, 2687 (1995)
transfer report:
ask author

Fri
Oct 27
14:00
D. Sciama
LT
Theoretical Physics Colloquium
Felix Parra (Oxford) --- Magnetized particle motion in 3D magnetic fields and its effect on fusion energy
IV
Thu
Nov 2
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Group Meeting (organised by FELIX)
Jason Parisi --- The effect of sheared flows on ITG-driven turbulence far above marginality
(transfer exam presentation, examiners S. Cowley & A. Schekochihin)
PPCF 52, 125001 (2010)
PPCF 54 055011 (2012)
transfer report:
ask author
Ivan Calvo
(CIEMAT)
V
Thu
Nov 9
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Chris Pringle (Coventry) --- Transitions in subcritical plasmas with sheared flow
arXiv:1708.03565
Ivan Calvo
(CIEMAT)
Chris Pringle
(Coventry)
VI
Thu
Nov 16.
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Group Meeting (organised by FELIX)
George Wilkie (Chalmers) --- Basic physics and kinetic simulation of runaway electrons
Adam Stahl's
PhD thesis

George Wilkie
(Chalmers)
VII
Thu
Nov 23.
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL)
Bill Dorland (Maryland) --- Discussion on various GK issues
arXiv:1708.04029
arXiv:1705.05407
arXiv:1703.06129
Bill Dorland
(Maryland)
VIII
Thu
Nov 30.
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Group Meeting (organised by FELIX)
Valerian Chen --- Effects of misaligning the probe beam and magnetic field in Doppler backscattering measurements
(transfer exam presentation, examiners M. Barnes & Colin Roach)
NF 55, 073024 (2015)
PPCF 44, 467 (2002)
PoP 5, 3529 (1998)
transfer report:
ask author

9
Thu
Dec 7
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
Plamen Ivanov --- Zonal flow-drift wave interactions in ion-scale turbulence in differentially rotating tokamak plasmas: BES measurements and gyrokinetic models
(transfer exam presentation, examiners P. Dellar & F. Parra)
PRL 85, 5336 (2000)
JPP 83, 905830504 (2017)
transfer report:
ask author

10
Thu
Dec 14
11:30
501
DWB
Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
Yohei Kawazura --- Ion vs. electron heating in GK turbulence
ApJ 651, 590 (2006)
ApJS 182, 310 (2009)
arXiv:1708.07235


Thu
Dec 21
No seminar
Ian Abel
(Chalmers)

Adnane Osmane
(Aalto U, Finland)
joins the group as visiting
postdoctoral fellow


Thu
Dec 28
No seminar. Happy New Year!


Hilary Term of 2018