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/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;

Trinity Term & Summer of 2021

The seminars/group meetings will be on Thursday at 11:00 in 501 Denys Wilkinson Building, except where indicated otherwise below.
(and on ZOOM while the damn virus lasts)
Note also the ALP Seminars (here is a list of all Physics seminars)

For coffee before/after: RPC Virtual Environment

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
0	Thu Apr 22	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) David Hosking --- Growth of long-range correlations in forced turbulence	preprint from author on request
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Felix Parra (Oxford) --- Collisional transport in large aspect ratio stellarators
I	Thu Apr 29	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL) Open mic
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Marija Vranic (IST, Lisbon) --- Direct laser acceleration (DLA) of leptons in plasma channels in radiation-dominated regime
II	Thu May 6	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Open mic
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Eugene Churazov (MPA, Garching & IKI, Moscow) --- X-ray view of the Coma galaxy cluster with SRG/eROSITA
III	Thu May 13	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by FELIX) Felix Parra --- Collisional transport in large aspect ratio stellarators (by popular demand --- this is a repeat of his JPP Colloquium talk, but at 1/2 the speed and revealing all the secret tricks)	preprint available from speaker on request
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Jack Hare) Seth Davidovits (Livermore) --- Turbulence in high-energy-density experiments: inference and generation
IV	Thu May 20	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Open mic
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Cary Forest, chaired by Troy Carter) Noah Hurst (Wisconsin) --- Vortex dynamics in non-neutral electron plasmas subject to externally imposed ExB flows
V	Thu May 27	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Seminar (organised by ALEX) Alessandro Geraldini (EPFL) --- Adjoint calculation of magnetic island width sensitivity	JPP 87, 905870302 (2021)
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Plamen Ivanov (Oxford) --- Zonally dominated dynamics and the transition to strong turbulence in cold-ion Z-pinch plasma	2D: JPP 86, 855860502 (2020) 3D: preprint from author on request
VI	Thu June 3	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting & Journal Club (organised by ALEX) Toby Adkins --- Update on electromagnetic ETG modes We shall also discuss, by way of Journal Club, the new paper by Maeyama et al. "Effects of ion polarization and finite-β on heat transport in slab electron-temperature-gradient driven turbulence" PoP 28, 052512 (2021)	draft paper available from author on request
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Ed Thomas (Auburn) --- Expanding frontiers for dusty plasmas: magnetic fields to microgravity
VII	Thu June 10	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by FELIX) Silvia Trinczek --- Finite orbit width effects on neoclassical transport in large aspect ratio tokamaks
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Josefine Proll (Eindhoven) --- Reduced turbulence in optimised maximum-J stellarators
VIII	Thu June 17	12:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by FELIX) Valerian Hall-Chen --- Beam model of Doppler backscattering: theory and application to MAST [note later starting time!]	NF 55, 073024 (2015) ++preprints/thesis draft available from author on request
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Chris Reynolds (Cambridge) --- Thermal conduction in the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters	arXiv:2007.07931
9	Thu June 24	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Andrew Brown --- Thermodynamics of collisionless relaxation	MTP dissertation available from author on request
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin, chaired by Cary Forest) Tim Horbury (Imperial) --- A new era in studying the solar wind
	Thu July 1	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Open mic
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Olga Alexandrova (Observatoire de Paris) --- Solar wind turbulence: in-situ observations from magneto-fluid to kinetic plasma scales
	Thu July 8	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL) Toby Adkins --- The physical mechanism of the curvature-TAI (update)
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Cary Forest) Benedikt Geiger (Wisconsin/Madison) --- Results and future directions of the HSX stellarator experiment
	Rishin Madan (Merton) joins the group as summer intern to work with Alex Schekochihin & David Hosking
	Thu July 15	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Journal Club (organised by ALEX) We shall discuss Rafiq et al. “Microtearing instabilities and electron thermal transport in low and high collisionality NSTX discharges”, PoP 28, 022504 (2021). This is a convenient starting point for following the paper trail backwards, both to their MTM models and other people’s.
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin, chaired by Cary Forest) Bill Daughton (Los Alamos) --- Challenges and opportunities for understanding magnetic reconnection in large systems
	Navonil Neogi (Cambridge) joins the group as summer intern to work with Felix Parra Plamen Ivanov graduates and moves to UKAEA as Culham Fusion Research Fellow
	Thu July 22	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by MICHAEL) Nicolas Christen --- Bistable turbulence in the presence of flow shear	draft paper available from author on request
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Muni Zhou (MIT) --- From the Weibel instability to flux-tube coalescence: a pathway to seeding plasma dynamos	JPP 86, 535860401 (2020)
	Felix Parra leaves Oxford to become (from October) Head of Theory at PPPL and Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University
	Thu July 29	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Journal Club (organised by MICHAEL HARDMAN) In the continued, yet-undashed hope of understanding what MTM is, we shall discuss some recent microtearing literature: Hamed et al. PoP 26, 092506 (2019) "Impact of electric potential and magnetic drift on microtearing modes stability" Zocco et al. PPCF 57, 065008 (2015) "Kinetic microtearing modes and reconnecting modes in strongly magnetised slab plasmas" Connor et al. PPCF 54, 035003 (2012) "Unified theory of the semi-collisional tearing mode and internal kink mode in a hot tokamak: implications for sawtooth modelling"
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Jack Hare, chaired by Alex Schekochihin) Emily Lichko (Arizona) --- Effects of distribution structure on predictions of plasma behavior in marginally unstable plasma
	Thu Aug 5	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Journal Club (organised by DENIS ST-ONGE) We shall discuss Rath et al. PoP 28, 072305 (2021) "Analysis of zonal flow pattern formation and the modification of staircase states by electron dynamics in gyrokinetic near marginal turbulence"
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Cary Forest) Sam Cohen (PPPL) --- Progress and plans for Princeton field-reversed-configuration research
	Thu Aug 12	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Valerian Chen --- A tutorial on technical developments and challenges in fusion (rehearsal)
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Omar Hurricane (LLNL) --- Some basic principles of inertial confinement fusion and some recent "burning plasma" results
	Jason Parisi leaves Oxford for Princeton to be a postdoc at PPPL
	Aug 16-18	16:00-21:30 ZOOM (links at the site)	Sherwood Fusion Theory Conference including talks by our very own D. St-Onge (Mon 20:30), N. Christen (invited, Tue 16:00), A. von Boetticher (Tue 19:15), P. Ivanov (Tue 19:15), M. Hardman (Tue 19:30), T. Adkins (Tue 20:00).
	Thu Aug 19	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Open mic: updates, discussion of Sherwood
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) Julia Stawarz (Imperial) --- Magnetospheric multiscale observations of collisionless plasma turbulence in Earth’s magnetosheath: turbulent electric fields & turbulence-driven magnetic reconnection
	Thu Aug 26	11:00 ZOOM (email Alex for link)	Plasma Journal Club (organised by JASON PARISI) We shall discuss J. Jara-Almonte & H. Ji PRL 127, 055102 (2021) "Thermodynamic phase transition in magnetic reconnection"
		16:00 ZOOM (sign up to get link)	JPP Frontiers of Plasma Physics Colloquium (organised by Bill Dorland and Alex Schekochihin) David Hosking (Oxford) --- Reconnection-controlled decay of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence and the role of invariants	arXiv:2012.01393

Autumn & Michaelmas Term of 2021