Seminars Autumn & Michaelmas Term of 2021

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 & Michaelmas Term of 2021

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
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! 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. 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
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
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
This calculation is not intellectual masturbation: there's no orgasm. 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 & Steve Cowley (in conversation)

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

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 & Steve Balbus
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
We are stuck at x=0. 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
I can follow what you are doing here only in the broadest sense. Sir Steve Cowley
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

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

Wk	Date	Time & place	Speaker & Topic	Background reading	Visitors in town
-5	Thu 2 Sept	11:00 ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Juan Ruiz Ruiz --- An update on consequences of using a realistic density fluctuation wavenumber spectrum for radial correlation Doppler reflectometry, and interpreting the forward-scattering contribution to the DBS signal using beam tracing	preprint from author on request
-5	Thu 2 Sept	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Lorin Matthews (Baylor) --- Modeling complex interactions in a complex plasma
-4	6-10 Sept	12:30-20:00 ZOOM	TTF Meeting in York
	Tue 7 Sept	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Open mic
	Thu 9 Sept	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Allen Boozer (Columbia) --- Fast magnetic reconnection	slides
-3	Tue 14 Sept	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL) Yujia Zhang --- Initial results for micro-stability and confinement of an ST40 plasma	PoP 15, 102310 (2008)	Roger Blandford (Stanford)
-3	Thu 16 Sept	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Dmitri Uzdensky (CU Boulder) --- Extreme plasma astrophysics: a shining new frontier	white paper: arXiv:1903.05328	Roger Blandford (Stanford)
-2	Tue 21 Sept	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX) David Hosking (Oxford) --- Decay of primordial magnetic fields via reconnection can explain cosmic-void observations	arXiv:2012.01393 +new paper draft from author on request	Roger Blandford (Stanford)
	Wed 22 Sept	13:00-18:00 ZOOM	TDoTP External Advisory Board Meeting
	Thu 23 Sept	13:00-18:00 ZOOM	TDoTP External Advisory Board Meeting
	Thu 23 Sept	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Saskia Mordijk (College of William & Mary) --- The role of turbulence in determining the density profile in magnetic confinement devices
-1	Tue 28 Sept	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX & GIANLUCA) Francesco Miniati --- Learning transport processes with intelligent machines	JPP 84, 905840305 (2018) arXiv:2105.08461 arXiv:2109.13096	Per Helander (IPP Greifswald) Roger Blandford (Stanford)
-1	Thu 30 Sept	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Maria Gatu Johnson (MIT) --- Exploring stellar nucleosynthesis and basic nuclear science using high energy density plasmas at OMEGA and the NIF		Per Helander (IPP Greifswald) Roger Blandford (Stanford)
0	Will Clarke (U of Sidney) and Michael Nastac (U of Maryland) join the group to start their DPhils advised by Alex Schekochihin and Michael Barnes; Yujia Zhang continues on from his Oxford MPhys project with Michael Barnes, now as a DPhil student. Plamen Ivanov, having defended and left Oxford, is back (including in flesh) in his new incarnation as Culham Fusion Research Fellow and a visitor with our group.				Per Helander (IPP Greifswald) Roger Blandford (Stanford)
	Tue 5 Oct	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX) Per Helander (IPP Greifswald) --- Upper bounds on gyrokinetic instabilities	arXiv:2108.12455
	Thu 7 Oct	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Hubertus Thomas (German Aerospace Centre) --- Research on complex/dusty plasmas in the lab and in space
I	Tue 12 Oct	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Journal Club (organised by ALEX) Chris Hamilton (now at Princeton) will discuss E. Kawamori, "Thermodynamics of weakly nonlinear Langmuir waves, spontaneous symmetry breaking, and Nambu-Goldstone mode generation", J. Phys. Soc. Japan 90, 024501 (2021) Thermodynamics of Weakly Nonlinear Langmuir Waves, Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking, and Nambu–Goldstone Mode Generation		Roger Blandford (Stanford)
I	Thu 14 Oct	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Scott Hsu (ARPA-E) --- Overview of ARPA-E's fusion R&D programs		Roger Blandford (Stanford)
II	Tue 19 Oct	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL) Alex von Boetticher --- Implementation of a novel Fokker-Planck collision model in the gyrokinetic solver Stella	PoF 19, 1532 (1976) +preprint from author on request	Ilya Dodin (Princeton) Roger Blandford (Stanford) Howard Wilson (York)
	Wed 20 Oct	15:00 Lindemann LT	TP Colloquium (organised by ALEX & JULIA) Ilya Dodin (Princeton) --- Modern geometrical optics of waves and turbulence: plasma physics and beyond
	Thu 21 Oct	11:00 Pease Rm Culham Laboratory & ZOOM (ask organiser for link)	CCFE Physics & Tech Meeting (organised by David Ryan) Ilya Dodin (Princeton) --- Modern geometrical optics for modelling RF waves in fusion plasmas Modern theory of geometrical optics (GO) can help improve modeling of RF waves and plasma turbulence. I will briefly overview some of my and collaborators' recent projects in this area, including the following: (i) a new quasioptical model for simulating mode-converting beams, with applications to LHD experiments [1]; (ii) GO modeling of cutoffs and caustics [2]; (iii) calculations of the nonlocal dielectric operator in inhomogeneous plasma with spatial dispersion; and (iv) quasilinear theory for inhomogeneous plasma, with ponderomotive effects retained. Time-permitting, I will also discuss applications of modern GO methods to studying drift-wave turbulence [3]. [1] Dodin et al, Phys. Plasmas 26, 072110 (2019); Phys. Plasmas 24, 122116 (2017); Yanagihara et al, Phys. Plasmas 26, 072111 (2019); ibid 26, 072112 (2019); Nucl. Fusion 61, 106012 (2021). [2] Donnelly et al, Phys. Rev. E 104, 025304 (2021); Lopez and Dodin, J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 38, 634 (2021); J. Opt. 23, 025601 (2020); New J. Phys. 22, 083078 (2020); J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 36, 1846 (2019). [3] Zhu and Dodin, Phys. Plasmas 28, 032303 (2021); Zhu et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 055002 (2020); New J. Phys. 21, 063009 (2019).
	Thu 21 Oct	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Alessandro Geraldini (EPFL) --- The magnetised plasma sheath and its role in the boundary of magnetic fusion devices
III	Tue 26 Oct	15:00 Lindemann LT	TP Colloquium (organised by ALEX & JULIA) Dmitri Uzdensky (CU Boulder) --- Relativistic particle accelerators and gamma-ray searchlights in the sky: magnetic reconnection in extreme astrophysical plasmas		Dmitri Uzdensky (CU Boulder) Roger Blandford (Stanford) Howard Wilson (York)
III	Thu 28 Oct	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Ilya Dodin (PPPL) --- Applications of modern geometrical optics to modeling radiofrequency waves and plasma turbulence
IV	Wed 3 Nov	16:00 Lindemann LT	TP Colloquium (organised by MICHAEL & JULIA) Ben Chandran (U of New Hampshire) --- Plasma turbulence and the origin of the solar wind		Ben Chandran (U of New Hampshire) Roger Blandford (Stanford) Howard Wilson (York)
IV	Thu 4 Nov	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Daniel Groselj (Columbia) --- Microphysics of relativistic collisionless electron-ion-positron shocks
V	8-12 Nov	Pittsburgh (allegedly)	APS DPP Meeting in Pittsburgh		Alessandro Geraldini (EPFL)
V	Tue 9 Nov	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL) Silvia Trinczek --- Finite orbit width effects on neoclassical transport in large aspect ratio tokamaks	report from author on request	Alessandro Geraldini (EPFL)
VI	Tue 16 Nov	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by MICHAEL) Bhavin Patel (UKAEA) --- Linear gyrokinetic stability of a high-beta non-inductive spherical tokamak	arXiv:2108.11169
VI	Thu 18 Nov	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Jonathan Squire (Otago) --- The helicity barrier: how low-frequency turbulence triggers high-frequency heating of the solar wind	arXiv:2109.03255
VII	Tue 23 Nov	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX & GIANLUCA) Lorenzo Perrone (DAMTP, Cambridge) --- Neutrino-electron magnetohydrodynamics in an expanding Universe followed by Plasma Group Meeting Robbie Ewart --- Collisionless relaxation of Lyndon-Bell plasma	arXiv:2106.14892
VII	Thu 25 Nov	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Victor Malka (Weizmann) --- Laser plasma accelerators: first results from the HIGGINS 2x100 TW laser
VIII	Tue 30 Nov	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL) Ollie Beeke --- Gyrokinetic simulations of a JET internal transport barrier (ITB)
VIII	Thu 2 Dec	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Elijah Kolmes (Princeton) --- Maximal energy release and the rules of rearrangement	PRE 102, 063209 (2020)
9	Tue 7 Dec	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by JUAN) Open mic
9	Thu 9 Dec	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Steve Tobias (Leeds) --- Quasilinear approximations and statistical simulation in turbulent MHD
10	Tue 14 Dec	No seminar (Omicron panic + Admission season)
10	Thu 16 Dec	16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Karl Krushelnick (U of Michigan) --- Relativistic plasma physics and high field phenomena using intense lasers
11	Tue 21 Dec	No seminars. Merry Xmas!
12	Tue 28 Dec	No seminars. Happy NY!

Hilary Term of 2022