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 (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/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 & Michaelmas Term of 2025

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 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 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. Francois Rincon For the sake of fairness, let me mention that some people have objections to this, none of which are particularly valid. Chris Chen This is more or less right. Perhaps less. Alfred Mallet 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 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) 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. 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 What is modelling? You run a simulation, you compare. If it coincides, great! If it doesn't coincide, fuck! Felix Parra

It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong. Carveth Read (usually attributed to Maynard Keynes) 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 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 If I had known the outcome of this calculation, I would never have done it. Michael Hardman Now that everyone knows this is the new Pandora's box, they are all going to jump into it. Francois Rincon We must think outside the axisymmetric box. Georgia Acton This is not real, it's a Platonic absolute.---The real thing is more Platonic and more absolute. Alex Schekochihin & Anthony Field All I've done here is sacrificed equality in favour of inequality. Per Helander Generally, it depends. Steve Majeski This numerical scheme works fine, but it is physically disgusting. Bruno Despres This research is not only not finished, it has not really been started. Anatoly Spitkovsky This is what really matters... given that "really matters" is a strong word in this context. Robbie Ewart This was discovered accidentally, but it was an informed accident. Plamen Ivanov Infinity is a long way away. Rafael Bailo To solve the kinetic equation on a mesh, you really need to know what you are doing. That's why, historically, people haven't. Rafael Bailo Just shout if you want to chat. Robbie Ewart They ran this simulation for a long time but not forever. Patrick Reichherzer No i's were dotted or t's crossed in the production of this paper. Anonymous

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

Wk	Date	Time & place	Speaker & Topic	Background reading	Visitors in town
	Tue 9 Sept	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL) Open mic
	Tue 16 Sept	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Agi Wierzchucka (& Archie Bott) --- Informal report from the KITP conference on relativistic plasma physics Prakriti Palchoudhury (& Alex Schekochihin)--- Informal report from the SAO conference on magnetic fields and cosmic rays
	Tue 23 Sept	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ARCHIE) Open mic		Jonathan Graves (York), Moritz Linkmann, Santiago Benavides (Edinburgh), David Hosking (Cambridge)
	Tue 30 Sept	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Pablo Bilbao (IST Lisbon--->Oxford) --- Kinetic instabilities in extreme plasma physics	Sci. Adv. 11, eadt8912 (2025) Nature Comm. 15, 5029 (2024)
	Pablo Bilbao (IST-Lisbon) moves to Oxford as a Leverhulme-Peierls Fellow at RPC & LMH Daniele Fedeli (SNS-Pisa) moves to Oxford as a master student to work with Plamen Ivanov and Alex Schekochihin Jean Luo (Cambridge MASt Maths) moves to Oxford as a DPhil student (Astro) to work with Dmitri Uzdensky Richard Nies (Princeton/PPPL) moves to Oxford as a Leverhulme-Peierls Fellow at RPC & New College Dmitri Uzdensky comes back to Oxford from his extended stay at KITP, Santa Barbara
0	Mon 6 Oct	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Dmitri Uzdensky (& Pablo Bilbao) --- Impressions from the KITP Programme on Relativistic Plasma Physics		Gabriele Celebre (Calabria)
	Louis Kemp (Oxford MMathPhys) returns to Oxford as a DPhil student (ALP) to work with Archie Bott Ildar Khabibullin (LMU-Munich) moves to Oxford as a PDRA to work with Alex Schekochihin and Dmitri Uzdensky Kira Li (Warwick) moves to Oxford as a DPhil student (TP) to work with Michael Barnes and Dan Kennedy Rocky Yu (Oxford MMathPhys) returns to Oxford as a DPhil student (TP) to work with Dmitri Uzdensky and James Oliver
I	Tue 14 Oct	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by ARCHIE) Mufei Luo (ALP, Oxford) --- Toward a data-driven heat flux closure beyond classical theories in fusion plasma	arXiv:2506.16619 arXiv:2509.06088	Gabriele Celebre (Calabria)
	Aykia Banerjee (IISER-Kolkata) moves to Oxford as a DPhil student (Astro) to work with Archie Bott and Alex Schekochihin
II	Tue 21 Oct	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Tutorial (organised by MEGAN) Megan Evans --- Critical balance in fusion plasmas	PRL 107, 115003 (2011) JPP 89, 905890406 (2023) PRL 110, 145002 (2013) arXiv2409.02283	Peter Catto (MIT)
III	Tue 28 Oct	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ARCHIE) Archie Bott --- Instabilities in burning ICF plasmas
IV	Tue 4 Nov	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Riju Dutta --- TBA		Per Helander (IPP Greifswald)
V	Tue 11 Nov	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Agi Wierzchucka --- TBA
VI	Tue 18 Nov	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) James Edmiston --- TBA
VII	Mon 24 Nov	11:30 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Archie for link)	ALP Seminar (organised by ARCHIE) Tom Blackburn (U Gothenburg) --- Particle and plasma dynamics in strong electromagnetic fields		Tom Blackburn (U Gothenburg), Robbie Ewart (Princeton), J-B Fouvry, Christophe Pichon, Sofia Flores, Anwar El-Rhirhayi, Eunhee Ko, Thomas Bizien (IAP)
	Tue 25 Nov	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Gravitational kinetics fest: presentations and updates by the IAP delegation TBA
VIII	Tue 2 Dec	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX) Silvia Trinczek (Princeton) --- TBA/TBC		Robbie Ewart, Silvia Trinczek (Princeton) Eunhee Ko, Thomas Bizien (IAP)
9	Tue 9 Dec	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ARCHIE) Rhys Davies --- TBA/TBC		Robbie Ewart (Princeton)
10	Tue 16 Dec	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA		Robbie Ewart (Princeton)
	Tue 23 Dec	No seminar, merry Xmas!
	Tue 30 Dec	No seminar, happy NY!
	Tue 6 Jan	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ???) TBA
0	Tue 13 Jan	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA		Roger Blandford (Stanford)
	...
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)
	...
	Mon 6 July	14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX) Toby Adkins (PPPL) --- TBA		Toby Adkins (PPPL)

Hilary Term of 2026