The 59th annual meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics (DPP) was held on October 23–27, 2017, in Milwaukee, WI. The meeting brought together researchers (undergraduate students through retirees) from all areas of plasma science. The presentations included five invited review talks, 100 invited talks, and four tutorials. There were 1142 contributed poster presentations and 595 contributed oral presentations. Two mini-conferences were held, one on Laser-Matter Interactions and the other on Bridging the Divide Between Space and Laboratory Plasma Physics. Included among the invited talks were three talks by DPP award winners.
Review talks spanned the range of plasma physics. On Monday, Dov Shvarts from the Nuclear Research Center in Negev, Israel, spoke on “In search of late time evolution self-similar scaling laws of Rayleigh-Taylor and Richtmyer-Meshkov hydrodynamic instabilities—recent theoretical advance and NIF Discovery-Science experiments,” presenting nonlinear evolution of hydrodynamic instabilities with the goal of finding universal results. With Tuesday's talk by Phil Snyder of General Atomics, “Physics of the Tokamak Pedestal, and Implications for Magnetic Fusion Energy,” the subject switched to magnetically confined plasmas, about the critical edge region of toroidal plasmas, which have a strong influence on how well the plasma is confined. Gregory Howes from the University of Iowa spoke about “Bringing Space Down to Earth: Exploring the Physics of Space Plasmas in the Laboratory” and discussed the challenges and rewards of finding and using laboratory analogs for understanding space physics. On Thursday, Dmitri Ryutov from Livermore, CA, presented his James Clerk Maxwell Prize address titled “Scaling Laws for the Dynamical Plasma Phenomena.” On Friday, the review series returned to magnetic fusion with Dennis Whyte from MIT, who spoke about “The Science and Technology Case for High-Field Fusion,” in which the need for rethinking fusion options given the large advances in high-temperature superconductors was noted.
The tutorials also covered the field of plasma physics and introduced some new topics to plasma physicists. Monday's tutorial “Classical and quantum approaches to extreme laser-plasma physics,” given by Mattias Marklund of Chalmers University of Technology, considered the possibilities that arise from ever increasing laser powers. On Tuesday, Brian Spears from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory spoke on “Contemporary machine learning: Techniques for practitioners in the physical sciences” and introduced those attending the DPP annual meeting to an area of intense current interest. Paul Bellan from Caltech delivered the Wednesday afternoon tutorial titled “Experiments and models of MHD jets and their relevance to astrophysics and solar physics.” On Thursday, a tutorial on magnetically confined plasma transport was presented by Francesca Poli from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, titled “Integrated Tokamak Modeling: When Physics Informs Engineering and Research Planning.” Wednesday afternoon also had an invited session that included talks by three award winners (see below) and three talks dedicated to the memory of Predhiman Kaw, who was the founding director of the Institute for Plasma Research located in the Gandhingar district of India.
The 59th Annual Meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics also served as a community gathering of plasma physicists and as such had a number of meetings at times outside of the times of the technical sessions. The Town Meeting on Plasma Physics at the National Science Foundation, chaired by Vyacheslav Lukin of the NSF Division of Physics, was held at Monday lunch time, as was the Women in Plasma Physics Luncheon. The University Fusion Association General Meeting took place on Monday evening, and it had presentations from James Van Dam, the acting Associate Director of the U.S. DOE Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, Mike Mauel, Columbia University, who spoke on the current NAS Committee for a Strategic Plan for U.S. Burning Plasma Research, Richard Buttery, General Atomics, who spoke on “Frontier Science at DIII-D Overview,” and Mickey Wade, General Atomics and co-chair of the workshops on U.S. Magnetic Fusion Energy Research Strategic Directions who gave an update on Community Workshop Process, the next meeting at Austin, and Plans. On Tuesday afternoon, there was a Town Hall Meeting on the Concerns of Junior Scientists, and on Tuesday evening, there was a brief special session on “Fellowship Opportunities for Graduate Students in Plasma Physics,” after which was the Women in Plasma Physics reception. The High Energy Density Science Association (HEDSA) Town Hall meeting and the Topical Group on Plasma Astrophysics (GPAP) Business meeting took place at Wednesday lunch time. As usual, there was a healthy demand for sub-community and interest group meetings, and meeting overlap was inevitable.
Awards were presented before the banquet dinner this year. These included Jonathan Squire (California Institute of Technology) for the Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award, Ian Chapman (Culham Centre for Fusion Energy) for the Thomas H. Stix Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Plasma Physics, and Felicie Albert (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) for the Katherine E. Weimer Award for Women in Plasma Science, all presented on Wednesday afternoon. The 2017 recipients of the John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research were Andrew James MacKinnon (LLNL), Chikang Li (MIT), Fredrick Séguin (MIT), Marco Borghesi (The Queen's University, Belfast), Oswald Willi (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf), and Richard D. Petrasso (MIT) for pioneering use of proton radiography to reveal new aspects of flows, instabilities, and fields in high-energy-density plasmas. This year's recipient for the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics was Dimtri Ryutov for his many outstanding contributions to the theoretical plasma physics including high energy density plasmas, open and closed magnetic configurations, and laboratory and astrophysical systems. Throughout dinner, the banquet attendees were treated to music by a string quartet.
The Education and Outreach Subcommittee (Dr. Arturo Dominguez, Chair) organized various events for the Milwaukee general public, K-12 students, teachers, and for undergraduate and graduate students within APS-DPP. On Tuesday, middle school and high school science and physics teachers attended the Teachers Day Workshop, where they learned about plasmas and fusion and were given demos and activities to take back to their classrooms. This year Teachers Day featured new workshop leaders, including young scientists Dr. Andrew Seltzman and Dr. Ted Golfinopoulos, presenting on the history of magnetic fusion and introducing plasmas to middle school teachers, respectively. On Tuesday afternoon, 71 undergraduate posters were presented and, in the evening, outstanding poster awards were given to the following undergraduate presenters: Gerrit Bruhaug, Bailey Zywicki, Micah Coats, Katelyn Cook, Christina Migliore, and Nathaniel Barbour. On Thursday and Friday, more than 1000 students from the Milwaukee area attended the Plasma Expo. This year the expo featured high powered demos from the University of Wisconsin—Madison outreach group, and, for the first time, the University of Iowa brought a Planeterrella experiment where attendees could reproduce astrophysical plasma phenomena, like the auroras or current rings, in a tabletop experiment. Also, for the first time, a panel session was organized to inform undergraduate and graduate students of graduate fellowship opportunities available. The panel was composed of fellowship recipients and program managers within NSF, DOE, and NASA.
The 2017 APS/DPP Program Committee developed the program for the 2017 meeting. The group was chaired by John Cary (DPP Chair elect), with ex-officio members, Earl Scime (DPP Chair), David Newman, (DPP Vice Chair), Hui Chen (DPP Treasurer/Secy), Richard Dendy (EPS Chair), and Mitsuru Kikuchi (AAPPS-DPP chair). Subcommittees represented the various areas in plasma physics. The Basic Plasma Physics subcommittee consisted of Troy Carter (chair), Alain Brizard, James Danielson, Nuno Loureiro, Mark Cappelli, John Foster, and Amy Keesee. The Particles, Beams, and Coherent Radiation consisted of Carl Schroeder (chair), Hong Qin, Howard Milchberg, and Bernhard Hidding. The Inertial Confinement Fusion subcommittee members were Christine Coverdale (chair), Jason Bates, Ryan McBride, Laura Berzak Hopkins, Brian James Albright, and Mingsheng Wei. Representing High Energy Density Plasmas were Scott Hsu (chair), Dan Sinars, Bhuvana Srinivasan, Charles Seyler, Chuang Ren, and Alla Safranova. Tobin Munsat (chair), Alex Likhanskii, Venkatt Ayyaswamy, and Steve Shannon comprised the Low-Temperature and Dusty Plasma subcommittee. The Magnetic Confinement Experiments subcommittee chair was Bill Heidbrink with members, Val Izzo, Jim Myra, Greg Hammett, and Paul Terry. The Astrophysical and Space Plasma subcommittee consisted of Ellen Zweibel (chair), Kris Beckwith, Mark Golkowski, and Vladimir Sotnikov. The members of this committee did an excellent job of putting together a well-balanced, interesting program.
Many individuals were essential to the success of the meeting, including staff from some of the participating institutions and the APS Meetings Department, Terri Olsen, Donna Greene, Eric Barth, Ebony Adams, Vinaya Sathyasheelappa, and Donald Wise. Lee Warren and the Freeman Team provided the audio-visual support. A special thanks to Saralyn Stewart, DPP Administrator. Saralyn assists in every aspect and maintains the corporate memory.
The review and invited speakers as well as the tutorial presenters were invited to submit papers for publication in a special edition of the Physics of Plasmas. We thank the editors and staff of the Physics of Plasmas, including Michael Mauel, Igor Kaganovich, Jason Myatt, André Melzer, Andrei Smolyakov, Brian Solis, Benita Hammer, and Deborah Doherty, for their efforts in preparing this special issue, which contains more than 50 articles, tutorials, and review papers across the important topical areas of plasma physics.
