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; MT 2014; HT 2015; TT & Summer 2015; MT 2015; HT 2016

  Trinity Term and Summer of 2016

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
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
 It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong. Maynard Keynes
 
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 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
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


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

Thu 7 Apr
 11:30
501 DWB		 Plasma Seminar (organised by MICHAEL)
Steve Balbus (Oxford Astro) --- Gravitational wave theory for the impatient
 arXiv:1604.05974
 Daniel Dunai
(WRC, Budapest)

Wed 13 Apr
 11:00
Fisher Rm
 Plasma Group Meeting
Justin Ball --- Driving intrinsic rotation in tokamaks using up-down asymmetric plasma shaping (practice talk for EPFL)
 PPCF 58, 045023 (2016)
 Daniel Dunai
(WRC, Budapest)
Thu 14 Apr
 11:30
501 DWB		 Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Daniel Dunai (WRC, Budapest) --- Beam emission spectroscopy diagnostics in Eurasia: measurements and developments
 RSI 86, 073501 (2015)
Nucl. Fusion 54, 114012 (2014)
0
 Thu 21 Apr
 11:30
501 DWB		 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by FELIX)
Chris Howland (Oxford Maths) --- Large-eddy simulation of turbulence
 copy of report on request
from author
or from P. Dellar
I
 Thu 28 Apr
 11:30
501 DWB		 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL)
Free discussion of current events
Bill Dorland
(Maryland)
Fri 29 Apr
 14:00
D. Sciama LT
 Theoretical Physics Colloquium:
Michael Barnes (Oxford TP) --- Turbulence in hot, magnetised plasma
16:00
M. Wood LT
 Physics Colloquium:
Bruce Remington (Head of NIF science programme) --- Frontier science on the National Ignition Facility (NIF)
II

 Wed 4 May
DWB
Conf. Rm.
 GS2 Fest
(organised by M. Barnes)
 Bill Dorland
(Maryland)
George Wilkie
(Chalmers)
David Dickinson
(York)
Benjamin Crinquand
(ENS Lyon)
joins the group as
an intern to work with
M. Barnes
Thu 5 May
 11:30
501 DWB		 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
Greg Colyer (Oxford) --- Collisionality scaling of electron heat flux caused by ETG turbulence
Fri 6 May
 16:00
M. Wood
LT
 Physics Colloquium:
Bill Dorland (Maryland) --- ECHO, ECHo, Echo, echo, … When echoes overwhelm Landau damping
JPP 82, 905820212 (2016)
III
 Thu 12 May
 11:30
501 DWB 		Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Istvan Cziegler (York) --- Probing flows and nonlinearities in tokamak turbulence
(followed by the first business meeting of the York-Oxford-Culham Turbulence Consortium)
Istvan Cziegler
David Dickinson
(York)
Fri 13 May
 14:00
D. Sciama LT
 Theoretical Physics Colloquium:
Christophe Pichon (IAP Paris) --- The self-induced secular evolution of gravitating systems: applications to ridge formation, disc thickening and stellar clusters around black holes
IV
 Thu 19 May
 11:30
501 DWB
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL)
Discussion (led by M. Barnes): Turbulence diagnostics in gyrokinetic codes: what we have, what we need, and what we want

V

 Wed 25 May
 14:30
D. Sciama
LT
 JAI Lecture:
Gennady Shvets (UT Austin) --- Synergistic direct/wakefield acceleration of plasma electrons in the plasma bubble regime using tailored laser pulses
 Gennady Shvets
(UT Austin)
Fri 27 May

 11:30
501 DWB
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
Dry run of the Vlasovia talk
Alex Schekochihin --- Phase mixing vs. nonlinear advection in drift-kinetic plasma turbulence
Note time change, due to the Lecturers' strile on 25-26 May
 JPP 82, 905820212 (2016)
arXiv:1603.06968
14:00
D. Sciama LT
 Theoretical Physics Colloquium:
Massimo Porrati (NYU) --- An apology for AdS3
13:30
Culham
K1/0/85
 UK Fusion Theory Meeting (organised by Nick Walkden):
Rob Kingham (Imperial) --- Overview of non-local electron transport modelling and research for laser-plasmas at Imperial
Ruth Bamford (RAL) --- Inside the Larmor orbit: What the solution to the 400yr old mystery of the ‘Lunar Swirls’ can tell us about edge physics
VI
 29 May-2 June
 Vlasovia-2016, Copanello, Calabria, Italy
Thu 2 June
 11:30
501 DWB.
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by FELIX)
Filomena Nave --- Lower hybrid current drive effects on JET plasma rotation
VII
 Thu 9 June
 11:30
501 DWB		 Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Peter Catto (MIT) --- Bringing coal to Newcastle and the MRI to Oxford
 JPP 81, 105810301 (2015)
 Peter Catto
(MIT)
Fri 10 June
 14:00
D. Sciama LT
 Theoretical Physics Colloquium:
M. J. Perry (Cambridge) --- The black hole information paradox revisited: soft hair
VIII
 Thu 16 June
 11:30
501 DWB		 Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Gareth Roberg-Clark (Maryland) --- Simulations and theory of the Electron Heat Flux Instability in high-beta plasmas
 arXiv:1606.05261

arXiv:1602.03126
PRL 112, 205003 (2014)
arXiv:1512.05796
 Peter Catto
(MIT)
Gareth Roberg-Clark
(Maryland)
9
 Thu 23
June
 11:30
501 DWB
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX & FELIX)
Discussion on the structure of ExB-sheared drift-wave turbulence
(A. Schekochihin, M. Fox, F. van Wyk, B. Crinquand)
PRL 110, 145002 (2013)
PRL 107, 115003 (2011)

PPCF 54, 055011 (2012)
PPCF 52, 125001 (2010)

NF 54, 042003 (2014)
PRL 109, 265001 (2012)
PoP 18, 102304 (2011)
PRL 106, 115004 (2011)
PRL 106, 175004 (2011)
PRL 105, 215003 (2010)
 Gareth Roberg-Clark
(Maryland)
Greg Howes
(Iowa)
Toby Adkins (Merton)
joins the group as summer
intern to work with
A. Schekochihin

Mon 27 June
 11:30
501 DWB
 Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Greg Howes (Iowa) --- Using field-particle correlations to diagnose the collisionless damping of plasma turbulence
Greg Howes
(Iowa)
Grigory Vekstein
(Manchester)

Greg Colyer leaves
for Exeter
 Edmund Highcock leaves
for Chalmers
Thu 30 June
 11:30
501 DWB		 Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Grigory Vekstein (Manchester) --- Nonlinear forced magnetic reconnection and onset of plasmoid instability
 PoP 22, 090707 (2015)

4-8 July
 EPS Plasma Physics, Leuven, Belgium
 Paolo Abiuso (SNS Pisa)
joins the group as summer
intern to work with
M. Barnes

Steve Cowley moves
to Oxford as
Professor of Physics
& President-elect of CCC
Thu 7 July
 11:30
501 DWB
 Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX & MICHAEL)
Discussion of the ExB sheared turbulence cont'd:
M. Fox --- Breaking of up-down symmetry by flow shear and experimental signatures of long-lived structures
F. Parra --- What we learned from the follow up simulations to the Barnes et al. paper before we got distracted
 PoP 18, 062501 (2011)
see also readings for
23 June

11-15 July
 Sciama LT
 Workshop on "Simulations and Modelling of Relativistic MHD Accretion Discs"
(organised by S. Balbus and C. Gammie)
 Per Helander
(IPP Greifswald)
Matt Kunz
(Princeton)
Henrik Latter
(Cambridge)
Young-chul Ghim
(KAIST)
Hyeon Park
(UNIST)
Thu 14 July
 11:30
501 DWB 		Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
Matt Kunz (Princeton) --- My life so far
...and any other business

Tue 19 July
 14:00
501 DWB
 Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX & GIANLUCA)
Francesco Miniati (ETH) --- The macroscopic impact of plasma microphysics on giant sources of diffuse radio emission in massive galaxy clusters
 ApJ 800, 60 (2015)
ApJ 782, 21 (2014)

 Francesco Miniati
(ETH)

Benjamin Crinquand
finishes his internship
Thu 21 July
 11:30
501 DWB		 Plasma Seminar (organised by GIANLUCA)
Banibrata Mukhopadhyay (IISc Bangalaore) --- Magnetohydrodynamic and hydrodynamic origin of linear instability and turbulence in accretion disks
 arXiv:1603.00143

25-29 July
 WPI Vienna Plasma Kinetics Working Group Meeting: Fusion Week
Thu 28 July
 No seminar

1-5 Aug
 WPI Vienna Plasma Kinetics Working Group Meeting: Astro Week
Thu 4 Aug
 No seminar

Thu 11 Aug
 11:30
501 DWB		 Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX)
Jonathan Squire (Caltech) --- Amplitude limits on Alfvénic perturbations in weakly magnetized low-collisionality plasmas 		arXiv:1605.02759 Jonathan Squire
(Caltech)

Thu 18 Aug
 11:30
501 DWB 		Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL)
Summer projects update:
Benjamin Crinquand (in absentia) & Michael Barnes --- Energy transfer diagnostics for ITG turbulence
 		PRL 107, 115003 (2011)
 Jonathan Squire
(Caltech)
Fri 19 Aug
 13:30
Culham
K1/0/85
 UK Fusion Theory Meeting (organised by Nick Walkden):
Ben Dudson (York) --- Edge and scrape-off layer turbulence simulations
David Ryan (CCFE & York) --- Plasma response to RMPs
Justin Ball (Oxford) --- Intrinsic rotation and up-down asymmetry

Thu 25 Aug
 11:30
501 DWB 		Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX)
Summer projects update:
Toby Adkins & Alex Schekochihin --- The phase mixing problem in a 1D Vlasov-Poisson system
 JPP 82, 905820212 (2016)
RMP 69, 507 (1997)
JPP 24, 287 (1980)
PRL 31, 1482 (1973)
 Jonathan Squire
(Caltech)
Toby Adkins finishes
his internship

Autumn/Michaelmas Term of 2016