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;
Trinity Term & Summer of 2024
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 |
0 |
Tue 16 Apr |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised
by MICHAEL HARDMAN) Michael Basile (ONERA/Ecole Polytechnique) --- Semi-Lagrangian non-interpolating schemes for plasma modelling The property of
Semi-Lagrangian Schemes to remove the CFL condition in
hyperbolic PDEs has led these schemes to successful
applications in Plasma Physics. However, standard
semi-Lagrangian methods primarily introduce numerical
diffusion due to interpolation and pose challenges in
parallelization, especially when employing global
interpolation schemes. An alternative formulation of
Semi-Lagrangian methods was proposed by Ritchie in
1986, introducing Non-Interpolating Semi-Lagrangian
methods for meteorological models. This work has
expanded upon Ritchie's formulation, developing
numerical schemes for plasma modeling. Starting with a Vlasov-Poisson model, it
has been possible to perform simulations with high CFL
values while maintaining the validity of the physics
in classical experiments, such as Landau damping. The study ends with the application of NISL
to a Plasma Sheath Formation model. This achievement
is reached by using RK integrators and WENO (Weighted
Essentially Non-Oscillatory) discretization
techniques. This method proves particularly effective
for simulating Sheath Formation in plasma, a task
complicated by strong gradients due to the diverging
electric field, which challenge many numerical
solvers.
|
thesis |
Michael Basile (ONERA/EP) |
I |
Tue 23 Apr |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised
by ALEX) Ben Chandran (UNH) --- The gyrokinetic dispersion relation of microtearing modes in collisionless toroidal plasmas |
JPP
90, 905900204 (2024) |
Ben
Chandran (UNH) |
II |
Tue 30 Apr |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ARCHIE) Archie Bott --- Firehose-induced collisionality in weakly collisional magnetised plasmas + Report from the PCTS Meeting on particle transport in magnetised turbulence (led by Robbie Ewart) |
PRL
112, 205003 (2014) ApJL 922, L35 (2021) arXiv:2310.17754 +ask author for preprint |
Ben
Chandran (UNH) |
III |
Tue 7 May |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Anjor Kanekar (Radiant AI) --- TBA |
blog
paper |
Ben
Chandran (UNH) Anjor Kanekar (Radiant AI) |
IV |
Tue 14 May |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Journal Club (organised by ALEX) 1) Plamen Ivanov will discuss Volcokas et al. "Self-interaction of turbulent eddies in tokamaks with low magnetic shear" [arXiv:2404.14520] and Choi et al. "Mesoscopic transport in KSTAR plasmas: avalanches and the ExB staircase" [PPCF, accepted] 2) Robbie Ewart will discuss Lemoine et al. "Nonlinear aspects of stochastic particle acceleration" [PRD 109, 063006 (2004)] |
arXiv:2404.14520 PPCF, accepted PRD 109, 063006 (2004) |
Ben
Chandran (UNH) |
V |
Tue 21 May |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised
by ALEX) Alexander Mushtukov (Oxford Astro) --- Accretion onto strongly magnetised neutron stars: recent results and issues |
||
VI |
Tue 28 May |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
||
VII |
Tue 4 June |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Seminar (organised
by ROBBIE) James Matthews (Oxford Astro) --- Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays: an origin story |
ECRS
Proc. (2023) MNRAS 524, 631 (2023) MNRAS 511, 448 (2022) MNRAS 482, 4303 (2019) MNRAS 479, L76 (2018) |
|
VIII |
Tue 11 June |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Journal Club (organised by ALEX) Michael Nastac will discuss Stumpo et al. "Relating intermittency and inverse cascade to stochastic entropy in solar wind turbulence" [ApJL 959, L20 (2023)] --- this paper will be used as context for a broader discussion of entropy and stochasticity; some background reading links are posted on the right |
ApJL
959, L20 (2023) ARCMP 2, 329 (2011) PRF 5, 034602 (2020) |
|
9 |
Tue 18 June |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
||
Tue 25 June |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ???) TBA |
|||
Tue 2 July |
14:00 Freeman Rm |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
|||
Surui Li
(Cambridge NatSci 2nd year) joins the group as a summer
intern to work with Archie Bott & Alex Schekochihin |
|||||
Tue 9 July |
14:00 Freeman Rm |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ???) TBA |
|||
Tue 16 July |
14:00 Freeman Rm |
Plasma Group Meeting (organised by GEORGIA) Hanne Thienpondt (CIEMAT) --- TBA |
Hanne
Thienpondt (CIEMAT) |
||
Tue 23 July |
14:00 Freeman Rm |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ???) TBA |
Hanne
Thienpondt (CIEMAT) Francois Rincon (Toulouse) |
||
Tue 30 July |
14:00 Freeman Rm |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
Matt
Kunz (Princeton) David Hosking (Princeton) Francois Rincon (Toulouse) |
||
Shuzhe Ren (Oxford Physics 2nd year) joins the group as a summer intern to work with Patrick Reichherzer & Alex Schekochihin | |||||
Tue 6 Aug |
14:00 Freeman Rm |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ???) TBA |
|||
Tue 13 Aug |
14:00 Freeman Rm |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
|||
Tue 20 Aug |
14:00 Freeman Rm |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
Yohei
Kawazura (Utsunomiya U) |
||
Dmitri
Uzdensky moves to Oxford as a new Professor of
(Plasma) Physics. |
|||||
Tue 27 Aug |
14:00 Freeman Rm |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) Yohei Kawazura (Utsunomiya U) --- TBA/TBC |
Yohei
Kawazura (Utsunomiya U) |
||
Tue 3 Sept |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
Yohei
Kawazura (Utsunomiya U) |
||
Tue 10 Sept |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
|||
Surui Li leaves
the group to return to Cambridge |
|||||
Tue 17 Sept |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
|||
Tue 24 Sept |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
|||
Tue 1 Oct |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
|||
Riju Dutta moves
to Oxford from IISc (Bangalore) as DPhil student to
work with Dan Kennedy & Alex Schekochihin. James Edmiston moves to Oxford from Cambridge as DPhil student to work with Dmitri Uzdensky, Michael Fitzgerald & Alex Schekochihin. Agi Wierzchucka returns to Oxford as DPhil student to work with Dmitri Uzdensky and Alex Schekochihin. |
|||||
0 |
Tue 8 Oct |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
Tunde
Fulop (Chalmers) |
|
I |
Tue 15 Oct |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
Tunde
Fulop (Chalmers) |
|
II |
Tue 22 Oct |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
Tunde
Fulop (Chalmers) |
|
III |
Tue 29 Oct |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
Tunde
Fulop (Chalmers) |
|
Robbie
Ewart leaves Oxford to take up a postdoctoral
fellowship with SCEECS at
Princeton and Maryland. |
|||||
IV |
Tue 5 Nov |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
Tunde
Fulop (Chalmers) Per Helander (IPP Greifswald) |
|
V |
Tue 12 Nov |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
Tunde
Fulop (Chalmers) Per Helander (IPP Greifswald) |
|
VI |
Tue 19 Nov |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
Tunde
Fulop (Chalmers) Chris Hamilton (IAS Princeton) Per Helander (IPP Greifswald) |
|
VII |
Tue 26 Nov |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
Tunde
Fulop (Chalmers) Chris Hamilton (IAS Princeton) |
|
VIII |
Tue 3 Dec |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
Tunde
Fulop (Chalmers) Chris Hamilton (IAS Princeton) |
|
9 |
Tue 10 Dec |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
||
10 |
Tue 7 Dec |
14:00 SL Room & ZOOM (ask Alex for link) |
Plasma
Group Meeting (organised by ALEX) TBA |
||