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PPPL Colloquia

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

THEORY DEPARTMENT

 

Theory seminars, 2004-2005

 

Standard Location: Theory Conference Room

Standard Time: Thursday

Refreshments are at 10:30am

Seminar is at 10:45am

 

Please contact mailto:Gwangson Choeif you would like to present a seminar, suggest a speaker or would like to be notified of seminars by email.


Please note: All visitor arrangements, including Site Access Notification , are the responsibility of the PPPL host.

Future seminars are subject to changes due to speakers’ availability. Local, flexible speakers maybe asked to reschedule their seminars to give opportunity for guests to deliver talks.

 

Page last updated March 28, 2005.

 

 

Seminars (click on seminar title to go toabstract)

Date

Speaker

Affiliation

Title

Comments

September 23

 

 

 

 

September 30

 

 

 

 

October 7

 

 

 

 

October 14

 

 

 

 

October

21

Roscoe White

PPPL

Zonal Flow Dynamics and anomalous Transport

 

October

28

Ben Chandran

University of Iowa

Thermal conduction in turbulent magnetized plasmas, and its effects in clusters of galaxies.

 

 

November 4

 

 

 

 

November 11

 

 

 

 

November 18

no speaker

 

 

APS Week

November23

Bedros Afeyan

Polymath Research, Inc.

KEEN Waves: Long Lived Non-stationary Nonlinear Coherent Structures in

the Spectral Gap of the Vlasov-Poisson System

 

 

Note-Tuesday

December 3

Roberto Torasso

NYU

 

"Stability of ballooning modes in the Hall-MHD Model"

 

Note-friday

December 9

T.S. Hahm

PPPL

Review of IAEA  Theory papers

 

December 16

Theory meeting

 

 

 

December 28

No speaker

 

 

Lab holiday

December 30

no speaker

 

 

Lab Holiday

January 4

Prof. Baofeng Feng

 

University of Texas - Pan American

Stable solitary waves in two-dimensional stabilized

Kuramoto-Sivashinsky systems

Note tuesday

January

13

Hyeon Park

PPPL

Study of unsolved issues of m=1 oscillation (ìSawtoothî) via 2-D ECE Imaging System on TEXTOR*

 

January 20

 

 

 

 

January 27

Theory Meeting

 

 

 

February 3

 

 

 

 

 

February 10

David J Strozzi

MIT

Electron Trapping in Raman Scattering from Inhomogenous Plasmas

 

 

 

 

February 17

Theory meeting Guoyong Fu and Nikolai Gorelenkov

PPPL

Theory/energetic particle SFG micro-seminar

 

February 24

Mikhail Sitnov

 

Structure and dynamics of thin non-Harris current

sheets"

 

February 28

Greg Hammett

PPPL

Calculation of Particle Noise-induced Diffusion and Its Effect on ETG Simulations

Special Monday Theory seminar located in the Display Wall Room at 1:30

March 3

Jay Johnson

PPPL

The magnetospheric response to the solar wind

 

March 10

Vladimir Yankov

 

 

Improvement of confinement in tokamaks by weakening of

poloidal magnetic field near boundary.

 

 

March 17

Theory meeting

 

 

 

March 24

 

 

 

 

March 31

John Krommes

PPPL

The Fluctuation--Dissipation Theorem (and beyond)

 

April 7

Igor Kaganovich

PPPL

Dynamics of Ion Beam Interaction with Background Plasma

 

April 15

D. VanEster

Laboratory for Plasma Physics, Association “EURATOM – Belgian State”, ERM/KMS, Trilateral Euregio Cluster, Brussels, Belgium

 

A simple method to account for drift orbit effects when modeling radio frequency heating in tokamaks

 

Please note, this is a special Friday Seminar, to be held in the Theory Seminar room at 11:00 am.

April 18

Michael Hesse

Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA

Mechanisms of electron demagnetization in collisionless magnetic reconnection

Please note, this is a special Monday Seminar, to be held in the Display Wall room at 10:45 am.

April 21

Theory meeting

 

 

 

April 28

Harry Mynick

PPPL

Tutorial on Stellarator Transport I

 

May 5

Masaaki Yamada and Russell Kulsrud

PPPL

Study of Two-Fluid MHD Physics of Magnetic Reconnection in Laboratory and Space Plasmas

 

May 10

Scott Parker

University of Colorado, Boulder

Gyrokinetic simulation of the collisionless and semi-collisional tearing mode instability

This is a special Tuesday seminar, to be held at 2:00 pm in the Theory Seminar Room.

May 12

Harry Mynick

PPPL

Tutorial on Stellarator Transport III

 

May 19

Theory meeting

 

 

 

May 26

Hong Qin

PPPL

A footnote on the adiabatic invariants

 

June 2

 

 

 

 

June 9

Shuanghui Hu

UC Irvine

Discrete Alfven Eigenmodes Excited by Energetic Particles in High-Beta Tokamaks

 

June 16

 

 

 

 

June 23

 

 

 

 

June 30

Bruce Scott

IPP

Theory and Computation in Full-F Gyrokinetics

 

July 28

Matthew Hole

Australian National University

Stepped Pressure Profile Equilibria in Cylindrical Plasmas via Partial Taylor Relaxation

 

August 10

Xianzhu Tang

Los Alamos National Lab

Magnetic Relaxation in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas

 

August 18

Hiroshi Naitou

Yamaguchi University

Gyro-Reduced MHD Simulation of Kinetic Internal Kink Modes

 Special Friday Seminar.

 

 

Thursday, October 21 10:45 am

 

Roscoe White

PPPL

 

Zonal Flow Dynamisc and Anomalous Transport

 

Nonlinear equations for the slow space-time evolution of the

    radial drift wave-ion temperature gradient 

    (DW-ITG) envelope and zonal flow (ZF) amplitude have

    been derived  within a coherent 4-wave drift wave-zonal flow model.

    In the local limit this model demonstrates

    spontaneous generation of zonal flow and nonlinear drift

    wave-zonal flow dynamics in toroidal plasmas.  The model

    allows slow temporal and spatial

    variations of the DW-ITG radial envelope, incorporating the

    effects of equilibrium variations, $ie$ turbulence spreading and

    size-dependence of the saturated wave intensities and transport

    coefficients.

    The competition between linear drive/damping and

    drift wave spreading due to linear and nonlinear group velocity

    and nonlinear energy transfer between DW and ZF

    determines the saturation levels of the fluctuating fields. The

    turbulence intensity level exhibits a transition from Bohm

    scaling at small system size ($L/\rho$) to gyro Bohm for large

    system size.

    This system exhibits chaotic behavior and intermittency, depending on

    system size and proximity to marginal stability.  The model is

    explored using Symbolic Dynamics, which is shown to provide a

    useful means of analyzing

    turbulence levels using a single time sequence data stream.

 

Thursday, October 28 10:45 am

 

Ben Chandran

 

Department of Physics & Astronomy

Universtiy of Iowa

 

Thermal conduction in turbulent magnetized plasmas,

and its effects in clusters of galaxies.

 

Clusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe. They host a wealth of interesting phenomena, from star formation on a massive scale to powerful extragalactic jets powered by supermassive black holes.  In this talk I will describe an outstanding theoretical puzzle in the study of galaxy clusters, namely the need to

explain the observationally inferred heating of galaxy-cluster plasmas. One of the most important heating mechanisms is thermal conduction, which is modified by turbulent intracluster magnetic fields.  I will describe how the Rechester-Rosenbluth theory of heat conduction in stochastic fields can be applied to this case, in which

the mean field is negligible. I will also present recent analytic and numerical results on electron diffusion and field-line trajectories in strong magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, as well as results on two other important heating mechanisms: turbulent intracluster motions and active galactic nuclei at the centers of clusters.

 

 

 

 

Tuesday,  November 28 10:45 am

 

 

 

KEEN Waves: Long Lived Non-stationary Nonlinear Coherent Structures in

the Spectral Gap of the Vlasov-Poisson System

 

Bedros Afeyan, Polymath Research Inc., Pleasanton, CA

 

  We will discuss theoretical, computational and experimental results concerning ponderomotively driven (and released) Kinetic Electrostatic Electron Nonlinear (KEEN) waves. Direct high resolution Vlasov-Poisson simulations, nonlinear coupled mode theory in phase space, and optical

mixing experiments on the Trident laser facility at LANL will be described whereby KEEN waves' existence was discovered, further explained and experimentally verified, respectively.

Implications to laser-plasma interaction physics and the large set of unresolved anomalies in SRS spectra, for instance, will be touched upon. Mutual interaction of KEEN waves as well as their interactions

with EPWs will also be described which open up new vistas of plasma physics in the spectral gap that was thought to exist in plasma physics based on linear theory, quasilinear reasoning and small amplitude nonlinear theories. KEEN waves exist deep in the nonlinear regime with remarkable stability properties. We will show links to Vlasov-Maxwell simulations and general nonlinear paradigms of instability saturation

which have to be revisited in light of the existence of KEEN waves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday Dec 3,  10:45 am

 

 

 

"Stability of ballooning modes in the Hall-MHD Model"

 

Roberto Torasso    NYU

 

The equations of the ballooning modes are derived

within the Hall~magnetohydrodynamics (HMHD)

model and given a standard  Hamiltonian form.

The Hamiltonian structure of the

equations is used to derive sufficient conditions for stability.

In most cases, ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) stability of ballooning

modes implies HMHD stability, as is the case for tokamak configurations

as well as plasmas with constant entropy

or incompressible plasmas. However,  in the case of closed-line

systems such as the field-reversed configuration (FRC),

or in a typical magnetospheric magnetic field,

  MHD ballooning stability does not automatically

guarantee HMHD  stability.

For the explicitly solvable configuration of the

Z-pinch it is shown that the sufficient condition derived here is also

necessary for stability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday Jan 5  10:45 am

 

Title: Stable solitary waves in two-dimensional stabilized

Kuramoto-Sivashinsky systems

 

Prof. Baofeng Feng

University of Texas - Pan American

 

By linearly coupling generalized two-dimensional Benney

equations to an extra linear dissipative equation, two-dimensional (2D)

extensions of a stabilized Kuramoto - Sivashinsky system are developed.

The models apply to the description of surface waves on 2D liquid

layers in various physical settings. A perturbation theory is developed

by treating dissipation and gain in the models as small perturbations.

Stable solitary wave solutions are predicted and numerically confirmed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday  Feb 3 10:45 am

 

 

Study of unsolved issues of m=1 oscillation (ìSawtoothî) via 2-D ECE Imaging System on TEXTOR*

 

 Hyeon Park, PPPL,

 

A novel 2-D Electron Cyclotron Emission Imaging (ECEI) system for measuring electron temperature fluctuations applied to study sawtooth crash physics on TEXTOR. A 128-channel prototype imaging system, covering 8 cm (radial) by 16 cm (vertical), with high spatial (1 cm x 1 cm) and temporal (up to ~5 msec) resolution employs large aperture optics to form a spatially resolved image of several cyclotron layers simultaneously. The ECEI system, which includes a 16-channel vertical array of antennas and wide-band transmission line, has provided behaviours of the electron temperature fluctuations similar to the ìmagnetic reconnectionî process during crash time of m=1 (sawtooth) oscillations, revealing details not accessible through conventional methods (1-D ECE and/or tomography). Long history of theoretical and experimental study of m=1 oscillation left remnants of mysteries and unresolved issues of physics such as current sheet and reconnection time scale. Details of poloidal and toroidal asymmetries of the measured electron fluctuation by 2-D ECEI may provide a clue of these issues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday Feb   10 10:45 am