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, Alex Schekochihin, and Dmitri Uzdensky, 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/MT 2025; HT 2026; TT & Summer 2026
Autumn and Michaelmas Term of 2026
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 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 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 |
It is
better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong.
Carveth Read
(usually attributed to Maynard Keynes)
Now
that everyone knows this is the new Pandora's
box, they are all going to jump into it.
Francois Rincon This is not
real, it's a Platonic absolute.---The real thing is
more Platonic and more absolute. Alex Schekochihin &
Anthony Field
|
[these quotes are mostly from these seminars and the
Vienna meetings]
| Wk |
Date |
Time & place |
Speaker &
Topic |
Background reading |
Visitors in town |
| Louis Richard (IRF Uppsala) moves to Oxford as a Marie Curie Fellow to work with Alex Schekochihin | |||||
| |
Tue 1 Sept |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ILDAR)
Anna Ivleva (LMU) --- Odd Radio Circles (ORCs): probing radio features in galaxy groups with simulations |
A&A
706, A80 (2026) |
Pranab
Deka (KU Leuven), Anna Ivleva (LMU) |
| Tue 8 Sept |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Kaibo Hu (Oxford Maths) --- Finite Element Exterior Calculus for computational topological hydrodynamics We discuss recent
work developing a topological perspective for
computing MHD using finite element exterior calculus
(FEEC) and finite element tensor calculus (FETC), Lie
advection of differential forms, and generalized Hodge
theory. The goal is to construct discretisations that
faithfully preserve the topological and dynamical
structure of the underlying continuum equations,
including phenomena related to magnetic relaxation,
dynamo and antidynamo, and cohomological constraints.
|
JCP
436, 110284 (2021) SIAM J. Sci. Comp. 48, 10.1137/25M1727540 (2026) arXiv:2603.12134 Acta Num. 15, 1 (2026) |
Ashley
Bransgrove (Princeton), Ben Chandran (UNH), Pranab Deka (KU Leuven), Sasha Philippov (Stanford) |
|
| Tue 15 Sept |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised by DMITRI)
Ashley Bransgrove (Princeton) --- Exotic magnetohydrodynamics in neutron-star interiors |
ApJ
395, 250 (1992) ApJ 979, 144 (2025) |
Ashley
Bransgrove (Princeton), Max de Bonhome (KU Leuven), Ben Chandran (UNH), Pranab Deka (KU Leuven), Ida Svenningsson (Chalmers) |
|
| Tue 22 Sept |
14:00 Lindemann LT |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ARCHIE)
TBA/TBC |
Ben
Chandran (UNH), Pranab Deka (KU Leuven) |
||
| Tue 29 Sept |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
TBA/TBC |
Ben
Chandran (UNH), Pranab Deka (KU Leuven) |
||
| 0 |
Tue 6 Oct |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by DMITRI)
Pranab Deka (KU Leuven)--- TBA |
Ben
Chandran (UNH), Pranab Deka (KU Leuven) |
|
| Simran Chowdhry
(MIT) moves to Oxford for a term to work on her PhD with
Dmitri Uzdensky Daniele Fedeli (SNS, Pisa) moves to Oxford for a DPhil with Michael Barnes and Dan Kennedy Enrico Martinez (Oxford Physics) joins the group for a DPhil with Alex Schekochihin Juan Rajagopal (Imperial College) moves to Oxford for a DPhil with Dmitri Uzdensky and Plamen Ivanov |
|||||
| I |
Tue 13 Oct |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ARCHIE)
TBA/TBC |
Pranab
Deka (KU Leuven) |
|