UMD Plasma Seminar

Plasma Physics Seminar

Fall 2017 Schedule

September 6, Wednesday 3:30PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Open
September 13, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Open
September 20, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Open
September 27, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Dr. Lynn Wilson, Goddard Space Flight Center Relativistic electrons generated locally within transient ion foreshock phenomena It has been known for years that charged particles can be accelerated by high Mach number collisionless shock waves. The accelerated particles can stream away upstream to form a foreshock region in communication with the shock. Due to differences in gyroradii, ions are more readily accelerated than electrons by collisionless shocks. These energetic, suprathermal ions stream against the incident flow providing free energy that can generate foreshock disturbances â large-scale (i.e., tens to thousands of thermal ion gyroradii), transient (~5-10 per day) structures. They have recently been found to accelerate ions to energies of several keV [e.g., Wilson et al., 2013] and even produce their own mini foreshocks [e.g., Liu et al., 2016]. While the high Mach number (M > 40) Kronian bow shock can generate ~MeV electrons [e.g., Masters et al., 2013], the much weaker Earth's bow shock (1 < M < 20) cannot generate electrons beyond a few 10s of keV [e.g., Wu, 1984]. We present recent results showing evidence that electrons can be energized to relativistic energies (~500 keV) far upstream of the bow shock [Liu et al., 2017; Wilson et al., 2016]. All previous observations of energetic foreshock electrons were attributed to geomagnetic and/or solar activity but we observe no geomagnetic or solar activity associated with these enhancements. Further, given that electrons generally have much smaller gyroradii than shock ramp widths and thermal speeds that greatly exceed shock speeds, no known shock acceleration mechanism can explain the energization of thermal electrons up to these relativistic energies. These observations could provide a new paradigm for electron injection in astrophysical shocks and resolve several unanswered questions in heliospheric and astrophysical plasmas.
October 4, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Open
October 11, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Open
October 20, Friday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Dr. Jungypo Lee, Massachusetts Institute of Techology Quasilinear velocity diffusion in a tokamak
October 25, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	No seminar: APS-DPP conference
November 1, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Dr. Yohei Kawazura, University of Oxford Development of a hybrid gyrokinetic ion and isothermal electron fluid code and its application to turbulent heating in astrophysical plasma Understanding the ion-to-electron temperature ratio is crucial for advancing our knowledge in astrophysics. Among the possible thermalization mechanisms, we focus on the dissipation of Alfvenic turbulence. Although several theoretical studies based on linear Alfven wave damping have estimated the dependence of heating ratio on plasma parameters, there have been no direct nonlinear simulation that has investigated the heating ratio scanning plasma parameters. Schekochihin et al. (2009) proved that the turbulent heating ratio is determined at the ion Lamor radius scale. Therefore, we do not need to resolve all the scales up to the electron dissipation scale. To investigate the ion kinetic scale effectively, we developed a new code that solves a hybrid model composed of gyrokinetic ions and an isothermal electron fluid (ITEF). The code is developed by incorporating the ITEF approximation into the gyrokinetics code AstroGK (Numata et al., 2010). Since electron kinetic effects are eliminated, the new hybrid code runs approximately 2 sqrt(mi/me) times faster than full gyrokinetics codes. We will present linear and nonlinear benchmark tests of the new code and our first result of the heating ratio sweeping the plasma beta and ion-to-electron temperature ratio.
November 8, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Dr. Albert Mollen, Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Greifswald Calculations of neoclassical impurity transport in stellarators
November 15, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Open
November 22, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	No seminar: Thanksgiving Break
November 29, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Dr. Tonatiuh Sanchez-Vizuet, Courant Institute, New York University Pseudo spectral collocation with Maxwell polynomials for kinetic equations with energy diffusion
December 6, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Dr. Stuart Hudson, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory FOCUS: Flexible Optimized Coils Using Space curves; a new approach to stellarator coil design
December 13, Wednesday 3:30 PM ERF 1207, Large Conference Room	Open

Contact Information: Marc Swisdak or Matt Landreman