Motivated by the opportunity to learn first-hand from the authors of outstanding plasma physics research, the Editors of Physics of Plasmas will invite authors of recently published featured articles to present a webinar based on their paper. Featured articles are selected by the Editors with input from referees and include novel and important research across the whole range of fundamental and applied plasma physics. Features in Plasma Physics webinars will occur monthly.

  • To view one of the upcoming webinars below, follow this Zoom Link. Don't forget to use passcode: PLASMA20.
  • Register for the POP Webinar Series emails! Sign up here to receive reminders of upcoming webinars.

Upcoming Webinars

Dr. Cliff Thomas

Speaker: Dr. Cliff Thomas
Date: May 23, 2025 11a.m. EDT
Title: Hybrid direct drive with a two-sided ultraviolet laser

Cliff Thomas is a scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester. He is best known for performing the first high foot implosions at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), and later proposing and demonstrating the low-gas-fill hohlraum (LGF) for inertial confinement fusion (ICF). In a short series of experiments, the LGF set new records for fusion yield at NIF, and laid the technical foundation(s) for targets that have since ignited. Dr. Thomas' current research focuses on machine learning, multidimensional simulations, cryogenic experiments, hydrogen-wetted foams, and notably, the main topics of this webinar: inertial fusion energy, and a novel "hybrid" target aimed at achieving even higher fusion yields. The hybrid was designed to complement a new type of laser being developed at Xcimer Energy, is the subject of a very promising review at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been awarded a patent, and exemplifies the potential for public-partnerships to accelerate advances in fusion energy.

Past Webinars

Prof. Jack Hare is an assistant professor in the Cornell School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He graduated with First Class honours in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge in 2011, followed by a Master’s degree in Plasma Physics from Princeton University in 2013. His doctoral research on the MAGPIE generator at Imperial College London was supervised by Prof. Sergey Lebedev, and he was awarded his PhD in 2017. Following this, he held postdoctoral appointments at Imperial College (2017-2019 and 2020) and the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, Germany (2019). In 2021, he started a new research group as an assistant professor at MIT, based around the PUFFIN pulsed-power generator, and he moved to Cornell University in 2025.

Thomas Varnish is a PhD student in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT. He received his MSci in Physics at Imperial College London (UK) in 2021. As a member of the PUFFIN group, Thomas studies pulsed-power-driven magnetic reconnection in the lab, with a particular focus on two-fluid guide field reconnection.

Mitchell L. R. Walker is the William R. T. Oakes School Chair and Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dr. Walker directs the High-Power Electric Propulsion Laboratory, and his primary research interests include experimental and theoretical studies of advanced plasma propulsion concepts for spacecraft. He received his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2004. Dr. Walker’s research activities include Hall thrusters, gridded ion engines, diagnostics for plasma interrogation and thruster characterization, vacuum facility effects, helicon plasma sources, and plasma-material interactions. He has authored more than 160 journal articles and conference papers in the fields of electric propulsion and plasma physics. Dr. Walker is the director of the NASA Joint Advanced Propulsion Institute.

As a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), Dr. Walker serves as an Associate Editor of the AIAA Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, and on the Editorial Board of Frontiers in Physics and Astronomy and Space Sciences – Plasma Physics. He is a member of the Department of Energy Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee and a member of the NASA Advisory Council – Technology, Innovation, and Engineering Committee. Dr. Walker delivered expert witness testimony to the Space Subcommittee - House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., to help guide national investments in electric propulsion technology. Among his many awards and honors, he is a recipient of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program Award, the AIAA Lawrence Sperry Award, the AIAA Sustained Service Award, and the Georgia Power Professor of Excellence Award.

Julian Lopez-Uricoechea is an NSTGRO and GEM Fellow working toward his Ph.D. at the High-Power Electric Propulsion Laboratory in the School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which he began in 2020. He earned his B.S. in Applied Mathematics and B.A. in Physics from Brown University, and his training includes a rotation at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His primary research focus is on combining Thomson scattering measurements with simulations to investigate electron phenomena in Hall effect thrusters. Other research interests include high-power electric propulsion, air-breathing electric propulsion, and fundamental physics of low-temperature plasmas.

Swadesh M. Mahajan is a research professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Distinguished Professor associated with SNU University, India. 

A fellow of the American Physical Society (1987) and of the Third World Academy of Sciences (1991), he directs the International College on Plasma Physics, ASICTP, Trieste, Italy (since 1989). 

Professor Mahajan is a highly published and cited author. He was the lead author of a paper selected as one of the hundred most influential papers collected in the Hundred Year Commemorative Volume (1995) of The Physical Review and Physical Review Letters. Discoverer, Co-discoverer of the Global Alfvén Eigenmode, of radiation damping, and of the Kinetic Toroidal Alfvén Eigenmode, of the new self-organized Multi-Beltrami states, of a nonlinear quantum Mechanics, of energy exchange mechanisms that may lead, amongst other things, to ultra-high energy cosmic rays. He is also the Co-inventor of the X and the SuperX divertor, and a compact fusion-fission hybrid system (see for instance, Nature | Vol. 460 | 2 July 2009). Granted United States Patent- US 8, 279,994. He is the coauthor of the most recent rather profound understanding of plasma confinement in magnetically confined plasmas that also suggests specific feasible routes to high confinement.  

His deep penetration into the dynamics of Hall and extended MHD has opened new vistas into this highly investigated field. A new understanding of the linear spectrum of HMHD waves becomes a basis for a rather powerful and relatively easier approach to elucidating the nonlinear Alfvenic state- perhaps the most ubiquitous state for magnetized plasmas.  

Hideo Sugama is a Professor at the Complex Global Simulation Unit of the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) and a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Frontier Science of the University of Tokyo in Japan. He has been working on instabilities and transport processes in magnetized plasmas based on kinetic theory and simulation. He received his PhD at Kyoto University in 1989, and then joined NIFS. In NIFS, he served as the Director of the Fusion Theory and Simulation Research Division from 2010 to 2017 and the Executive Director of the Numerical Simulation Reactor Research Project from 2017 to 2023.

Lorin Swint Matthews is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Physics at Baylor University where she is the Associate Director of the Center for Astrophysics, Space Physics, and Engineering Research. She received her Ph.D. in Physics from Baylor University in 1998. She worked for Raytheon Aircraft Integration Systems from 1998-2000 as a multi-disciplined engineer in the Flight Sciences Department, where she worked on NASA's SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) aircraft. In 2000, she joined the faculty at Baylor University. Her areas of research include numerical modeling and experimental investigations of the charging and dynamics of dust in astrophysical and laboratory plasma environments, for which she received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2009. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Richard A. Gottscho

Speaker: Richard A. Gottscho
Date: November 8, 2024, 11 a.m. EST
Title: Human-Machine Collaboration in Semiconductor Process Development
Webinar Abstract: View Richard A. Gottscho's abstract
Link to view Richard A. Gottscho's recording

Richard A. Gottscho is an executive vice president and strategic advisor to the CEO of Innovation Ecosystem at Lam Research, where he develops strategies and leads collaborations to accelerate innovation in the semiconductor industry. Gottscho brings 40 years of technology leadership to his role. Previously, he was an executive vice president and the chief technology officer at Lam where he led initiatives to transform lithography and process engineering. Prior to that, he served as an executive vice president of Lam’s Global Products Group, overseeing the company’s Deposition, Etch, and Clean businesses. Before joining Lam, Gottscho was a member of Bell Laboratories, where he oversaw research in materials processing, advanced packaging, and flat panel displays. He is a fellow of the American Physical and American Vacuum Societies and has served on numerous committees for conferences in plasma technology. He regularly presents at universities and conferences. In recognition of Gottscho’s technical achievements, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering inducted him into their ranks in 2016 “for solutions to plasma etch technology and productivity challenges in scaling semiconductor devices from the micro- to nanometer levels.” Gottscho has also been honored with the AVS’s Peter Mark Memorial Award, the AVS Plasma Science and Technology Division Prize, the Dry Process Symposium Nishizawa Award, Gaseous Electronics Conference Foundation Talk Lecturer, Pennsylvania State University Eberly College of Science Distinguished Alumnus, Pennsylvania State University Alumni Fellow, Tegal Thinker Award, and being named a VLSI Semiconductor All-Star. He earned his Ph.D. and B.S. degrees in physical chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Pennsylvania State University, respectively.

Y. Y. Lau Ryan Revolinsky

Speaker: Y. Y. Lau and Ryan Revolinsky
Date: September 20, 2024, 11 a.m. EDT
Title: On the two-dimensional Brillouin flow
Link to view Y. Y. Lau and Ryan Revolinsky's recording

Y. Y. Lau is currently an emeritus professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was an instructor and then assistant professor in applied mathematics at MIT from 1973-1979, a research physicist at the Science Applications, Inc., from 1980-1983, and at the US Naval Research Laboratory from 1983-1992.  He joined the University of Michigan as a professor in 1992 and continued working there until his retirement in 2022. He has worked on electron beams; coherent radiation sources; and plasmas and discharges, contributing to the studies of gyrotron traveling wave amplifier and relativistic klystron; multipactor discharge; accelerator and Z-pinch stability; quantum and higher-dimensional Child-Langmuir Law; low noise magnetron; Thomson X-ray sources; and electrical contact.  He has supervised or co-supervised 33 graduated Ph.D. students. He was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1986, and Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2007. He received the 1999 IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Award and the 2017 IEEE John R. Pierce Award for Excellence in Vacuum Electronics. He served three terms as an Associate Editor for Physics of Plasmas from 1994 to 2002.

Ryan Revolinsky is currently a Ph.D. student at the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research topics are crossed-field high power microwave devices and pulsed power systems. He has completed two internships at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Carlo Maria Lazzarini is a researcher at ELI ERIC in the ELI-Beamlines facility, where he is responsible for the innovative ALFA Beamline, a unique high repetition rate source of relativistic electrons driven by the ELI L1 kHz multi-cycle (15 fs) OPCPA laser. He is an expert of ultrashort high-power laser and plasma diagnostics, laser-driven electron acceleration, high-resolution optical imaging and nanoparticle resonances. He earned a master’s degree in physics at the University of Pisa, Italy, and he is currently finishing his PhD in Quantum Technology at the Czech Technical University in Prague. During his studies, he spent one year as an Erasmus student at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in München, Germany, where he studied ultrafast laser physics technology, and four months as visiting researcher at the University of Maryland, working on few-cycle kHz pulse shaping. In recent years, he demonstrated quasi-monoenergetic, low divergence, electron beams accelerated to the highest energy (50 MeV) ever reached driven by a kHz laser system. He was invited to present this result at international conferences, and now he is coordinating user experiments on secondary sources generation and on samples irradiation with such unique electron beams.

Dan Clark has been a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 2003 working in inertial confinement fusion research and hydrodynamic instability theory and modeling. From 2013 to 2021, he served as the Capsule Modeling Lead for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) where he pioneered the application of high-resolution, three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulations to understanding NIF implosions. In 2018, Dan’s work in this area was recognized with the Ronald C. Davidson Award from the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics. Currently, Dan is the design lead for two experimental campaigns on NIF aiming at increasing the compression of NIF implosions to increase fusion yields. Prior to joining Lawrence Livermore, Dan earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University.

Yurii Kovtun is a Head of Laboratory within the Stellarator Department at the Institute of Plasma Physics the National Science Center "Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology" (NSC "KIPT") in Kharkiv, Ukraine. His research focuses on ion cyclotron range frequency (ICRF) plasma start-up and production, wall conditioning in stellarators, and tokamaks. Kovtun received his MSc degree in engineering and electrical-physics from the National Technical University "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute" in the Kharkiv, Ukraine in 2004 and a plasma physics PhD in 2013 from the National Science Center "Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology," where his research focused on dense multicomponent gas-metal plasma in a high-power pulsed reflex discharge. In 2017, he joined the Stellarator Department in the Institute of Plasma Physics the NSC "KIPT." In 2021, he has been given the academic rank of senior researcher.

Fuyuan Wu is an associate researcher at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. He focuses on the theoretical simulation, experimental design, and data analysis of laser driven fusion enhanced by machine learning, especially for the double-cone ignition scheme (DCI scheme). Wu graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong University in 2012 with a bachelor's degree. He obtained his doctoral degree from the graduate school of China Academy of Engineering Physics in 2017. After his PhD, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Polytechnic University of Madrid in Spain. In 2020, he joined the double-cone ignition group led by Academician Jie Zhang at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Zhengdong Liu is currently a PhD student in astronomy at Beijing Normal University. His research topics are the dynamical evolution of colliding plasmas in double-cone ignition and laboratory astrophysics.

Job Beckers Mikhail Pustylnik

Speaker: Job Beckers and Mikhail Pustylnik
Date: April 12, 2024, 11:00 a.m. EDT
Title: Physics and applications of dusty plasmas: The Perspectives 2023
Link to view Job Beckers and Mikhail Pustylnik's recording

Job Beckers is an Associate Professor within the CIMlabs/Elementary Processes in Gas Discharges group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Netherlands. His research focuses on dusty and complex plasma physics — i.e. discovering how nanometer- to micrometer-scale particles interact with plasmas on the most fundamental level — and on the applications of these systems in high-tech equipment, such as used in photolithography and electron microscopy. Beckers obtained his MSc degree in Applied Physics from Eindhoven University of Technology in 2007. He then conducted his PhD research at TU/e on “dust particle(s) (as) diagnostics in plasma,” which he completed Cum Laude in 2011. After his PhD, Beckers worked at the company XTREME Technologies (Germany) for a year before being appointed at TU/e. In June 2017, Beckers was awarded the prestigious NWO VIDI grant.

Mikhail Pustylnik has been a researcher at the Institute of Materials Physics in Space of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne since 2014. He previously focused on complex plasma experiments in the microgravity facility “Plasmakristall-4” (PK-4) on the International Space Station, as well as on the experimental investigations of voids and instabilities in dusty plasma. Recently, his research interests shifted toward technological applications of low-temperature plasmas. Pustylnik defended his PhD in 2003 at the Joint Institute for High Temperatures of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. For his thesis, he studied dynamical methods of measurements of the charges of dust particles immersed in plasmas, as well as nonlinear compressional waves in dusty plasmas. In 2004, he moved to Nagoya University in Japan as a postdoc, where he studied delayed charging phenomena in dusty plasmas. In 2006, he joined the Complex Plasma Group at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, German, where he first focused on the diagnostics of a combined ns-pulsed and radiofrequency discharge. Later, he joined the PK-4 project where he became responsible for the scientific aspects of the flight hardware qualification. He changed to DLR in the frame of complex plasma research transfer from Max Planck Society in 2014.

Stéphane Liberatore is currently a Research Physicist at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) where he has been working in Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) since 2003. The topic he mainly deals with is the target design for indirect drive experiments on laser facilities (Omega, National Ignition Facility, Laser Megajoule). He defended his PhD in Astrophysics in 2000 at Observatoire de Paris-Meudon (France) on the subject of dust-driven winds in circumstellar envelopes of evolved stars. He developed self- consistent numerical models coupling radiative transfer and hydrodynamics. Then he joined CEA as a postdoc where his research activity focused on analytical modeling of magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities in compressible fluids. The paper presented here reports on the first indirect drive ICF experiments at Laser Megajoule (France). One important challenge was to design, simulate and predict a 3D configuration, in particular, by the use of a full-integrated 3D radiation hydrodynamics code.

Jason TenBarge

Speaker: Jason TenBarge
Date: February 23, 2024, 11:00 a.m. EST
Title: Electron energization in reconnection: Eulerian vs Lagrangian perspectives
Link to view Jason TenBarge's recording

Jason TenBarge is a Research Scholar at Princeton University in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences and at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. TenBarge studies basic plasma processes by applying and developing analytical and numerical tools to understand kinetic dissipation and transport processes in space and astrophysical plasmas. He received degrees in Astrophysics and Mathematics from Indiana University in 2003 and a physics PhD in 2009 from the University of Texas at Austin, where his research focused on relativistic plasma astrophysics. From 2009 to 2013, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Iowa studying solar wind turbulence. Afterward, he moved to the University of Maryland College Park as a research scientist from 2013 to 2017. In 2017, he joined the astronomy and plasma physics group at Princeton University.

Dennis G. Whyte is the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering and the director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A recognized leader in fusion research, especially in the magnetic confinement of plasmas, Whyte has paved an innovative and faster path to producing fusion energy. He leads the fusion project, SPARC — a compact, high-field, net fusion energy fusion device — in collaboration with private fusion startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). The core of the SPARC project was formed over eight years ago during a design course led by Whyte to challenge assumptions in fusion. Many of the ideas underpinning the high-field approach — including the use of HTS for high-field, demountable magnets, liquid blankets, and ARC (a fusion power plant concept) — have been conceived of or significantly advanced in his design courses. Whyte has over 350 publications, is a fellow of the American Physical Society, and has served on panels for the National Academies, the United States government, and the Royal Society. In 2018, Whyte received The Fusion Power Associates (FPA) Board of Directors Leadership Award which is given annually to individuals who have shown outstanding leadership qualities in accelerating the development of fusion. Whyte earned a B.Eng from the University of Saskatchewan and an MS and PhD from Université du Québec.

Andrew (Tasman) Powis is a Computational Research Associate at the Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He obtained his PhD from Princeton University in 2021 studying the design of kinetic plasma simulation software and algorithms with the aim of enabling whole-device modelling of low-temperature plasma devices. These methodologies were implemented into the high-performance LTP-PIC software which has enabled the study of energy distribution functions in large area capacitively coupled discharges, as well as anomalous transport in three-dimensional partially magnetized ExB plasmas. Tasman’s other research interests include studying the propagation of relativistic electron beams through the Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere, investigating the non-intrusive nature of incoherent Thompson scattering, and advocating for policy choices which will enable the safe use of nuclear technologies in outer space.

Stefano Merlini is a PhD student in the Plasma Physics group at Imperial College London. He received a BSc in Bioengineering and a double Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from University of Padova (Italy) and Cranfield University (UK). Stefano’s research field focuses on shocks and transition to turbulence in supersonic magnetized HED plasmas relevant to astrophysics and Inertial Confinement Fusion. During his PhD, he has conducted experiments on inverse Z-Pinch exploding wire arrays at the MAGPIE pulsed-power facility using laser-based diagnostics, such as Thomson Scattering, laser interferometry and a novel diagnostic technique, named imaging refractometer, allowing to characterize electron density perturbations in high-dense plasmas.

My research is focused on the theoretical study of stellarator-optimization physics. This involves the study of a large variety of plasma and magnetic field properties and their mutual connections, an effort that offers both to deepen our understanding and aid stellarator-design efforts. This includes the study of single-particle, MHD stability, turbulent behavior, shaping, etc. I graduated in Physics from the University of Oxford in 2017, and obtained my PhD in Plasma Physics from Princeton University in 2022 working on Quasisymmetry. I am currently working as a postdoc at the IPP Max Planck Institute at Greifswald, Germany, in the Stellarator Theory department.

Louis Jose is a Research fellow in the Fundamental Plasma Theory group at the University of Michigan. He received his master’s in physics from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in 2016 and his Ph.D. in applied physics from the University of Michigan in 2023. His research is focused on developing a plasma kinetic theory for strongly magnetized plasmas characterized by gyrofrequency larger than the plasma frequency.

Sven Korving is a PhD student, under supervision of Guido Huijsmans, in the Science and Technology of Nuclear Fusion group at the Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands. His general aim is to combine non-linear magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of instabilities with divertor physics in 3D. His work spans from developing these combined models and using these hybrid MHD-kinetic simulations of tokamak plasmas to understand and predict power fluxes and impurity transport in ELMing and ELM-controlled plasmas. The research is done in collaboration with the ITER Organization to address the unknowns on impurity transport in the ITER tokamak, which is under construction.

The paper presented here lays the foundation for this work as an improved treatment of the Scrape-off-layer and the Divertor region is necessary for: predicting power fluxes and plasma-wall interaction impacted by the MHD processes during ITER operation and understanding of the full interaction of impurity transport from the plasma-facing-components to the core of the plasma.

Dr. Hui Chen joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1999 after receiving her Ph.D. in plasma physics from Imperial College, London. Her chief research interests are in High Energy Density plasma physics, including Inertial Confinement Fusion experiments on the National Ignition Facility, intense laser produced relativistic electron-positron pairs, x-ray imaging using novel gated sensors, and x-ray spectroscopy. She is also currently developing graduate courses on High Energy Density plasmas and diagnostics. She became an APS Fellow in 2016.

Frederico Fiuza is a Senior Staff Scientist and the Theory Group Leader at the High Energy Density Science division of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He obtained his PhD degree in Plasma Physics from Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal, in 2012. He then became a Lawrence Postdoctoral Fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory between 2012 and 2015, before joining SLAC. His research interests span a wide range of topics in astrophysical and laboratory plasmas, including particle acceleration, magnetic field amplification, collisionless shocks, and magnetic reconnection. Fiuza’s work on laboratory astrophysics was recognized with the 2018 APS Thomas H. Stix Award and the 2020 APS John Dawson Award. He also received the EPS PhD Research Award in 2013 and the DOE Early Career Award in 2017. In 2023, he was named Kavli Fellow by the US National Academy of Sciences.

Keizo Fujimoto is a Professor of space physics at the School of Space and Environment, Beihang University, China. He has been working on theoretical and simulation studies of magnetic reconnection in collisionless plasma for the application to magnetospheric substorms and solar flares. In particular, his research is focused on the mechanisms of wave generation, energy conversion, and magnetic dissipation in reconnection. He has also developed a new PIC code with adaptive mesh refinement to perform multiscale kinetic simulations within reasonable computer resources. Fujimoto received his PhD in Science from Kyoto University, Japan, in 2006 with support from a JSPS fellowship. He worked in space physics groups at NICT, Nagoya University, and University of Alberta, in astrophysics groups at RIKEN and NAOJ, and in a fusion group at the University of Tokyo, before he joined Beihang University in 2017 as a faculty member.

Richard Sydora is currently a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Alberta, Canada. His research spans a wide range of areas in plasma physics that includes theoretical and computational studies of nonlinear waves, turbulence and transport in magnetized plasmas, particle acceleration and energy conversion processes, such as magnetic reconnection, in space and laboratory plasmas. He received his Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1985 and then joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), becoming a Research Physicist and Adjunct Professor. In 1998 he joined the physics faculty at the University of Alberta and was Director of the Theoretical Physics Institute from 2015-2020. He has held visiting professorships at Nagoya University, Japan and in Germany at the Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, University of Duesseldorf and the Forschungszentrum Juelich, Helmholtz Research Centre as an Alexander von Humboldt Research fellow.

Axel Könies is a senior researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for Plasmaphysics in Greifswald Germany. He is co-heading the general theory group in the stellarator theory department. He received his master and PhD at the University of Rostock. In 1996 he joined the stellarator theory department as a postdoc and worked on fast particle-wave interaction and MHD in stellarators. His focus is on the numerical treatment of these phenomena. He authored codes for Alfvén continua and MHD stability in three-dimensional magnetic systems and also worked with gyro-kinetic particle-in-cell codes where he was involved in the development of a fast and reliable numerical scheme for electro-magnetic calculations.

Neeraj Chaubey John Goree

Speakers: Neeraj Chaubey and John Goree
Date: February 17, 2023, 11:00 AM EST
Title: Coulomb expansion of a thin dust cloud observed experimentally under afterglow plasma conditions

Neeraj Chaubey is a postdoctoral researcher in the Physics and Astronomy Department of The University of Iowa. He received his PhD in plasma physics from the Institute for Plasma Research, India in 2017. Presently, he is working in the field of dusty plasmas with a focus on understanding dust dynamics in an afterglow plasma. Recently, he has found that the dust particles which were negatively charged in a plasma ON condition, gain a large charge positive charge in an afterglow plasma i.e., after turning OFF the plasma. His research interests are dusty plasmas, non-thermal plasma jets, non-linear dynamics, chaos, and synchronization.

John Goree received his PhD in Plasma Physics from Princeton University in 1985, and then joined the faculty of The University of Iowa. He is presently a Professor in the departments of Physics and Astronomy as well as Mechanical Engineering. He is a laboratory experimenter, with research topics that have included the fundamental physics of dusty plasmas, plasma sources for semiconductor processing, plasma diagnostics, microgravity experiments, and statistical physics.

He Cheng received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and is currently an associated professor with the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology. An author of dozens of research articles, Cheng’s current research interests include theory and modeling of gas discharge physics, the application of plasma to the environment, energy conversion, and bio-medicine.

Matt Landreman is an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland – College Park, where he has worked since 2013. Previously, he studied at Swarthmore College and Oxford University, receiving a PhD in physics from MIT in 2011. He has worked on several aspects of collisional and turbulent transport in magnetic fusion devices, as well as optimization and magnet design methods for stellarators. Other professional interests include subcritical turbulence and computational methods.

Julian Lütgert is a PhD student in the High Energy Density Physics group of Prof. Dominik Kraus in Rostock, Germany. He received his Master's degree from TU Dresden in cooperation with the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf in 2021 and worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a summer intern in 2022. Julian's research focuses on the properties of light elements under extreme conditions, such as those found in the interiors of stars or giant planets.

Cecilia Norgren is a researcher at the Space Plasma Physics Group at the Department of Physics and Technology at the University of Bergen in Norway. She received her PhD in physics from Uppsala University and the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in 2017. Using a combination of fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations and spacecraft observations with Cluster and the Magnetospheric MultiScale mission, her research focuses on the kinetic physics of thin boundaries and magnetic reconnection, plasma heating and acceleration, and wave-particle interaction in space plasma.

Derek Schaeffer is an Associate Research Scholar in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University and long-term visitor in the Theory Department at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He received his BA in Physics and Philosophy from Cornell University and his PhD in Physics from UCLA. He did his postdoctoral work at Princeton in high-energy-density laboratory astrophysics, where he was one of the primary developers of pioneering laboratory experiments that utilize high-energy lasers to generate astrophysically-relevant collisionless shocks in high-energy-density plasmas. His research focuses on experiments and numerical simulations of the interaction of magnetized plasmas and strongly driven high-energy-density flows, with applications to astrophysical phenomena, particle acceleration, and inertial fusion energy.

Kenan Qu is an Associated Research Scholar in the Astrophysical Department at Princeton University. He studied quantum optics and optomechanics in Prof. Girish Agarwal’s group at Oklahoma State University and received his Ph.D degree in 2015. He then joined Prof. Nat Fisch’s group at Princeton University as a postdoc in 2016. His research activities regard theoretical and numerical modeling of laser-plasma interactions, with particular interest in Raman amplification, light with orbital angular momentum, and laser frequency upshift. He has a broad scope of interest and publications in optical topics including quantum squeezed light, quantum electrodynamics, fiber optics, laser spectroscopy, and PT-symmetry.

Jean-Pierre Boeuf is senior scientist of the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) at the LAPLACE laboratory of the University of Toulouse, France. He graduated from Centrale-Supelec and obtained his PhD from the University of Paris-Saclay. At LAPLACE, he has led a group of researchers involved in modeling and experimental work on low temperature plasmas. His research interest is focused on the basic physics and modeling of low temperature plasmas in the context of various applications such as magnetized ion sources for satellite propulsion, negative ion source for the ITER neutral beam injection system, plasma actuators for flow control, microwave applications of plasmas, microdischarges and plasma display panels, plasma switches and circuit breakers. He paid particular attention to the phenomena of self-organization and pattern formation in low-temperature plasmas (microwave plasmoids in air, filamentation of dielectric barrier discharges, striations in positive columns, rotating spokes in magnetized plasmas). For the past ten years he has been interested in the physics of ExB plasmas devices in the context of Hall thrusters and magnetron discharges and in the development of instabilities in these plasmas.

Dr. Brian M. Haines is a staff scientist in the Eulerian codes group in the Computational Physics division at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Brian has led the decadal effort to develop the xRAGE radiation-hydrodynamics simulation code into a state-of-the-art tool for studying Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) and High Energy Density Physics (HEDP) experiments. This work included contributions to the development and advancement of algorithms used to model laser physics, non-LTE effects, heat transport, radiation transport, hydrodynamics, plasma transport and viscosity, three-temperature equation of state, thermonuclear burn, and other physics necessary to model these experiments. In addition, he developed many of the simulation strategies that are now widely used to model these experiments using xRAGE. He has also pioneered the use of full-physics high-resolution three-dimensional simulations for understanding capsule implosions. This work has advanced our understanding of the impacts of engineering features and hydrodynamic instabilities on target performance and how various asymmetry seeds interact. Brian is currently the Principal Investigator for the Bosque experimental campaign to study the coupling of material mixing and thermonuclear burn. He has also served as a co-chair of the NNSA's hohlraum predictive capability working group in 2020 and served on numerous other committees. Brian has received numerous awards for his work, including two distinguished performance awards from LANL and three defense programs awards of excellence from NNSA. Brian received his PhD in mathematics in 2011 from the Pennsylvania State University, where he studied the homogenization of active fluid suspensions. He then came to Los Alamos as a Metropolis Postdoctoral Fellow, where he studied hydrodynamic instabilities and the transition to turbulence in shock tube, ICF, and HEDP experiments.

Takanobu Amano is an Associate Professor of the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of Tokyo. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo in 2008. He spent about four years at Nagoya University as a postdoctoral researcher and came back to Tokyo as a faculty member in 2012. He has mainly been working on theoretical and numerical studies on high-energy particle acceleration and kinetic plasma instabilities associated with collisionless shocks. His research is relevant for both heliospheric and astrophysical plasmas.

Taiki Jikei is currently a graduate student at the Department of Earth and Planetary Science, the University of Tokyo. After completing his master’s degree, he began Ph.D. study in April 2022. His research topics are instabilities in collisionless plasmas and fundamental studies of plasma simulations.

Emanuele Poli

Speaker: Emanuele Poli
Date: March 18, 2022 at 11:00 AM EST
Title: Nonlinear dynamics of geodesic-acoustic-mode packets
Link to view Poli's recording

Emanuele Poli is a staff member of the Tokamak Theory Division at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching bei München, Germany. He was acting director of the division from 2014 to 2016 and is an adjunct professor at the University of Ulm since 2016. He received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Pavia (Italy) in 1999, with a thesis on paraxial electron-cyclotron (EC) wave beams. Since then he was actively involved in the modelling of EC waves in several devices, including ITER and DEMO, and contributed to various aspects of the theory of high-frequency waves, in particular concerning methods for the description of beam scattering from density fluctuations in tokamaks. During his postdoc, he started to work also on kinetic simulations of plasma instabilities like the tearing mode, focusing first on neoclassical processes and later on the interaction between disparate scales, like tearing modes and turbulence, and more recently between turbulence and fast-particle-driven modes. His studies of Geodesic Acoustic Modes (GAMs) center on the application of techniques developed in different fields (like beam physics and nonlinear optics) to the description of GAM packets. The talk will review the main results of this work.

Dominik Kraus is a professor for high energy density physics at University of Rostock and group leader at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) in Germany. He received his PhD at TU Darmstadt, Germany in 2012 for experimental work at the PHELIX laser of GSI Helmholtzzentrum for heavy ion research. He then moved to UC Berkeley as a postdoc to conduct experiments at the Linac Coherent Light Source of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and at the National Ignition Facility of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 2016, he joined HZDR as a Helmholtz Young Investigator Group Leader to work towards first experiments using the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields (HIBEF) at the High Energy Density instrument of European XFEL. Before starting the professorship in Rostock in 2020, he also headed the high energy density division at HZDR from 2018 to 2020. Dominik’s primary research interests are the experimental investigation of chemistry and phase transitions inside giant planets, warm and hot dense matter relevant to the interiors of stars, and the synthesis of new materials via extreme conditions.

Peter Manz

Speaker: Peter Manz
Date: January 21, 2022 at 11:00 AM EST
Title: Gyrofluid simulation of an I-mode pedestal relaxation event
Link to view Manz's recording

Peter Manz is a recently appointed professor at the Institute of Physics at the University of Greifswald. His main field of research is turbulence at the plasma edge of magnetically confined fusion plasmas, from the pedestal to the divertor chamber. Peter Manz studied at the University of Kiel. In the diploma thesis, he dealt with turbulent cascades.

During his Ph.D. at Stuttgart University, he studied the interaction of shear flows with turbulence. It was during his time as a postdoc at the University of California at San Diego that he first came into contact with I-mode. The I-mode is a fascinating tokamak confinement regime in which particles and heat transport seem to be decoupled. After returning to Germany to the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, he first investigated scrape-off layer dynamics. In recent years, together with Dr. Tim Happel, his fellow student from Kiel times, the I-mode in ASDEX Upgrade became one of his favorite topics. The paper 'Gyrofluid simulation of an I-mode pedestal relaxation event' shows simulations of relaxation processes of the outermost edge of the confined plasma. These were previously studied in detail in ASDEX Upgrade by Dr. Davide Silvagni.

The paper presented here is a bit of an anniversary, it is Peter Manz's 25th peer-reviewed first author paper.

Alexandre Lazarian

Speaker: Alexandre Lazarian
Date: December 10th at 11:00 AM EST
Title: 3D turbulent reconnection: Theory, tests, and astrophysical implications
Link to view Lazarian's recording

Alexandre Lazarian is a professor of Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin - Madison with a joint appointment at the Department of Physics. He started his research in the theoretical physics group led by Professor Vitaly Ginzburg. Soon after his Diploma work, he got a Soros Fellowship to spend one year at Oxford University. Later, he got an Isaac Newton Studentship to do his PhD at the Department of Applied Mathematics University of Cambridge. Upon getting his PhD from Cambridge, he stayed for a short period in Austin and Harvard and later had his 3 year postdoc in Princeton. After Princeton, he got a 5 year Fellowship at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), but spent only one year there, as he got his faculty job at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Alexandre P. Marcowith (Director of Research at CNRS, Laboratoire Univers et Particules de Montpellier, France) has defended his PhD in Physics in 1996 (university Paris Diderot, Grenoble Observatory, France) on the subject of kinetic theory and gamma-ray emission in relativistic blazar jets. His main research interests are in high-energy Astrophysics of compact objects (active galactic nuclei, X-ray binaries), particle acceleration and transport in turbulent flows and the origin of Cosmic Rays. He is member of the High Energy Stereoscopic System and Cherenkov Telescope Array collaborations. He is member of the International Astronomical Union and the European Astronomical Society.

Andrea Kritcher

Speaker: Andrea Kritcher
Date: September 17, 2021 at 11:00 AM EDT
Title: Achieving record hot spot energies with large HDC implosions on NIF in HYBRID-E
Link to view Kritcher's recording

Dr. Annie Kritcher is the design lead within the ICF program for campaigns to increase implosion scale on the NIF (HYBRID-E and recent 1.35 MJ experiment N210808) and is a member of the ICF leadership team. She serves as team lead for integrated implosion modeling which oversees all experiments to increase energy coupling on the NIF. She is also a group leader within the design physics division at LLNL. Her main responsibilities as a campaign lead include setting the strategic direction of the campaign with an experimental co-lead, leading the design effort and post-shot analysis, interpretation of data, collaboration with other campaigns, and interfacing with target fabrication. Annie has served as the chair of the Strategic Initiative and Exploratory Research High Energy Density Science LDRD technical review committee, the Lawrence Fellow selection committee, Dynamic Compression Sector proposal selection committee, and the LCLS MEC peer review panel.

Annie was first employed at the Lab as a summer intern in 2004, as an LLNL Lawrence Scholar during her time at UC Berkeley, and as a Lawrence postdoctoral fellow in 2009 following completion of her Ph.D. Annie’s thesis on experimental measurements of X-ray Thomson Scattering to diagnose high energy density matter was conducted at the Jupiter laser facility (LLNL) and Omega laser facility (Rochester) which is featured in Science. During her postdoctoral appointment she continued her work on X-ray Thomson Scattering, investigated nuclear plasma interactions, and co-lead a campaign to measure the equation of state of materials to hundreds of Mbars which is featured in Nature. She also obtained an LDRD to continue this project after her postdoc. Following her postdoc she transitioned from experimental physics to design physics within the Design Physics directorate at LLNL where her main focuses included assessing the impact of low mode asymmetries on ICF implosions, ICF ablator material comparison, and increasing ICF implosion scale. This work has led to the highest fusion yields ever achieved in the laboratory (>1.35 MJ) and will be submitted to Nature.

Yakov E. Krasik received his M.Sc. (1976) in physics from the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, Russia and Ph.D. (1980) in physics from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia. He held various academic research positions at the Nuclear Research Institute, Tomsk (1980-1991) and at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel (1991-1996). Since 1997, he joined the Physics Department, Technion, Haifa, Israel, where he is currently Professor and Head of the Plasma Physics and Pulsed Power Laboratory and holds the Max Knoll Chair in Electronics and Opto-Electronics. He supervised 23 PhD students and 26 MSc students, published 295 peer reviewed papers in leading physics journals including 14 review papers, two chapters in text books. He authored 26 patents in the field of pulsed power science. His H-index is 37 and citations number is 5000. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the IEEE Fellow and a member of the board of the Israel Plasma Society. He is a Senate member of the Technion and a member of the Technion’s Central committee. He served as a Chairman of Israeli Plasma Society for several years, has several awards from Russian government and Technion. He is the recipient of the 2020 IEEE Magne Kristiansen award for contributions to experimental nuclear and plasma science. His main research interests are in the fields of pulsed current-carrying plasmas (high-current electron and ion diodes, plasma opening switches, different types of plasma cathodes for high-current relativistic electron beam generation, nanosecond times scale electrical discharges in pressurized gases, underwater electrical wire and wire array electrical explosion and generation of strong shock waves, high power microwave generation and microwave compressors) and plasma diagnostics (different electrical probes, optical imaging, x-ray and spectroscopy). Various applications of plasma physics are also within the scope of his interests.

Earl Scime
Peiyun Shi

Speakers: Earl Scime and Peiyun Shi
Date: July 16, 2021 at 11:00 AM EDT
Title: Alfvénic modes excited by the kink instability in PHASMA
Link to view Scime and Shi's recording

Earl Scime is the Oleg D. Jefimenko Professor of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University (WVU). He currently serves as the Director of the School of Mathematical and Data Sciences at WVU and is a past Chair of the American Physical Society’s Division of Plasma Physics. He moved to WVU in 1994 from Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he was a DoE Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow. His research interests span fusion plasmas, space plasmas and industrial plasmas – with a cross-cutting focus on particle heating and velocity distribution function measurements. In 1992, he reported the first measurements of dynamo driven ion heating in the Madison Symmetric Torus. He has continued to measure particle velocity distributions in laboratory and space plasmas through a variety of diagnostic techniques including energetic neutral atom imaging, Thomson scattering, single photon laser induced fluorescence, cavity ring-down spectroscopy, and two-photon laser induced fluorescence. He has contributed to over 190 peer-reviewed publications and was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2011. He is also founder and head coach of the award-winning robotics team, Mountaineer Area Robotics, an internationally recognized high school robotics program.

Peiyun Shi is currently a postdoctoral research associate in the Center for KINETIC Plasma Physics at West Virginia University. He received his PhD in plasma physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2019. Presently, he works on the PHASMA (PHAse Space MApping experiment), a recently commissioned fundamental plasma physics facility designed to simulate and investigate space relevant plasma phenomena in the laboratory. His research focus is on measurements of electron dynamics in flux ropes and during magnetic reconnection at the kinetic scale. Using incoherent Thomson scattering he is able to measure details of the electron velocity distribution function as a function of time during flux rope evolution and mergers of flux ropes.

Xavier Garbet

Speaker:Xavier Garbet
Date: June 11, 2021 11:00 AM EDT
Title: Wave trapping and E × B staircases
Link to view Garbet's recording

Xavier Garbet received in 1988 a PhD degree from Aix-Marseille University (France). He is currently Research Director at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). His research activity covers various aspects of magnetic fusion energy. The topics he mainly deals with are transport processes, turbulence, and stability issues in magnetized plasmas, with some predilection for theory and modelling.

Michael Murillo is a professor in the Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering department at Michigan State University. He spent the bulk of his career prior to 2016 at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he started in 1995 as a Director's Fellow. His primary research interests are in non-ideal plasma physics and has made contributions to molecular dynamics methods, kinetic theory, atomic processes in plasmas, dusty plasmas, ultracold plasmas and warm dense matter. He integrates theory, numerical models, molecular dynamics, kinetic codes and, more recently, machine learning, to waves, instabilities, transport and mixing in non-ideal plasmas. He has more than 80 peer-reviewed publications, is currently a plasma physics Editorial Board Member for Physical Review E, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Alexander Simon Thrysøe

Speaker: Alexander Simon Thrysøe
Date: April 23, 2021, 11:00 AM EDT
Title: Dynamics of seeded blobs under the influence of inelastic neutral interactions
Link to view Thrysøe's recording

Alexander Simon Thrysøe is a postdoctoral researcher at Technical University of Denmark (DTU). His main field of research is numerical simulations of the turbulent edge region of magnetically confined plasmas. In 2018 he received his PhD degree at DTU after investigating the interplay between neutral particles and coherent plasma structures. The matter of plasma-neutral interactions has remained a key topic in his research after the PhD. He contributes with numerical simulations to high-priority research topics in the European fusion research program, to aid the understanding of physical mechanisms in the tokamak plasma edge region where neutral interactions with the plasma appears to be a main player. In addition to his research, Alexander is strongly involved in education of high school level students and teachers, where he promotes fusion energy as a topic for the physics class and as a possible career path for young people who wish to solve important societal challenges with science.

Richard Fitzpatrick is a native of England and is currently a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has been a faculty member since 1994. He is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a fellow of the American Physical Society. His research is focused on the physics and control of macroscopic instabilities in tokamak plasmas. He is the author of many books, including Plasma Physics, an Introduction (2014).

Li-Jen Chen is a Research Astrophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center. She is passionate about exploring space as a laboratory to study fundamental plasma physics. Her research embraces the nonlinear dynamics of fully kinetic plasmas in systems without effective collisions such as planetary magnetospheres and the solar wind. She integrates theory, simulations, and measurements from space missions such as NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale to study magnetic reconnection and shocks. Li-Jen graduated from National Taiwan University, received her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Washington, did postdoctoral research at the University of Iowa, and had held research faculty positions at the University of New Hampshire and University of Maryland. In 2020, her research accomplishments were recognized with the NASA Agency Honor Award - Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal and Fellowship of the American Physical Society.

Dr. Naoki Bessho is an associate research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), and conducts numerical and theoretical studies of space plasma physics at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). His research area includes magnetic reconnection, shock waves, instabilities, and particle acceleration in space and astrophysical plasmas. He received a Ph.D. in 2001 at Nagoya University, Japan, studying electron acceleration in shock waves using particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. In 2002, when he was a postdoctoral research scholar at the University of Iowa, he developed a PIC simulation code, ExPIC. Until 2014, he studied kinetic physics inside the diffusion region of magnetic reconnection using ExPIC at the Space Science Center at the University of New Hampshire. In 2014, he joined a research group at UMCP and NASA GSFC, performing PIC simulations to understand space observation data obtained by NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. Dr. Bessho’s work elucidated kinetic mechanisms to realize fast reconnection in pair plasmas, formation mechanisms of crescent electron distribution functions during reconnection in the Earth’s magnetosphere, and kinetic mechanisms to form multiple electron-only reconnection sites in the Earth’s bow shock.

Yuan Ping obtained her B.S. and M.S. degrees from University of Science & Technology of China, and her PhD in plasma physics from Princeton University in 2002. She joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a Lawrence Fellow in 2003, and stayed as a research scientist since 2006. She has broad interests in High-Energy-Density Physics, including material properties under dynamic compression, fast ignition, warm dense matter study and laser-plasma interactions, in particular, energy partition and transport in these systems. Recently she devoted her research to improving the energy efficiency in indirect-drive ICF using advanced hohlraums. She is the recipient of many awards, including the 2011 APS/DPP Katherine E. Weimer Award, and a 2013 DOE Early Career Research Program Award. She is also a Fellow of the APS since 2015.

Luc Bergé graduated in pure mathematics and in theoretical physics from the Universities of Toulouse and Paris-Sud, Orsay, France. In 1989, he received his PhD in theoretical physics, devoted to the strong Langmuir turbulence in laser-driven fusion plasmas. In 1997, he passed his Habilitation thesis on wave collapse in physics. Since 1990, he has been a research scientist at CEA (French Commission for Atomic Energy). Working first on parametric instabilities in plasmas, he turned to nonlinear optics in 1995 and investigated the self-focusing of powerful light pulses in Kerr media, proved the stability of quadratic solitons in chi2 crystals and the arrest of wave collapse by normal group-velocity dispersion. He next devoted his research to the filamentation of ultrashort laser pulses in transparent media (air, liquids or dielectrics) and related properties such as supercontinuum generation and pulse self-compression which he pioneered in the early 2000. He also worked later on nanosecond light pulses subject to stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in thick optical glasses and proposed efficient solutions to suppress SBS in large laser systems. Since 2010, Luc Bergé has focused his scientific activities on the generation of terahertz (THz) pulses from plasmas created by multi-color femtosecond pulses. With his colleagues he cleared up the underlying physics of photocurrents emitting THz waves when two-color laser pulses ionize gases. Currently, his team is exploring novel methods to produce highly energetic THz waves through laser-plasma particle (electrons, ions) accelerators, bridging thereby the fields of extreme nonlinear optics and relativistic plasma physics. Also involved in experimental efforts on innovative detection methods, Luc Bergé is coordinating the French ANR project ALTESSE, devoted to technological developments of an ultrabroadband terahertz spectroscopy based on laser-driven air plasmas.

Born in France, Laurent Gremillet received his PhD degree in plasma physics from Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France, in 2001. He has since been working at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). His research activities regard the theoretical and computational modelling of laser-plasma and beam-plasma interactions, with prime interest in kinetic plasma instabilities, laser-driven particle acceleration, fast electron transport, laboratory astrophysics, and high-field physics. He is a member of the Board of the Plasma Division of the French Physical Society and of the Beam Plasma & Inertial Fusion Section of the Plasma Physics Division of the European Physical Society.

Dr. Roman Smirnov, one of the pioneers of computational studies of dust related phenomena in magnetic confinement fusion devises, is the next speaker in our “Features in Plasma Physics” webinar series. He started research in the field of fusion plasma in 2002 during his PhD at the National Institute for Fusion Science, Japan. Since 2006, he has been working as a scientist at University of California San Diego in Plasma Theory Group headed by Prof. Krasheninnikov. During these years Dr. Smirnov and his colleagues made prominent contributions in studies of dust in fusion plasmas, an emerging field of fusion plasma science. His research interest also includes related fields of plasma-material interactions and transport phenomena in peripheral plasma regions of tokamaks. Processes taking place in tokamak’s boundary plasma play essential role in sustainment of fusion reaction conditions in the plasma core and are critically important for longevity of plasma-facing materials in next generation fusion reactors. Dr. Smirnov’s work demonstrates profound and sometimes unexpected effects of impurities in form of dust on edge plasma transport. These studies open door for development of novel methods to control fusion plasma boundary with injection of dust of various characteristics and quantities.

Professor Chandrashekhar (Chan) Joshi, recognized as the father of the experimental field of plasma-based particle accelerators, is the first speaker in our “Features in Plasma Physics” webinar series. He started the first research group on Plasma Acceleration at UCLA in 1982 and made landmark contributions to all four avatars of plasma-based wakefield accelerators. Such wakes are now being considered as accelerating structures for the next generation of particle colliders and compact light sources to make these critical instruments of scientific discovery compact and affordable. Over the past four decades Joshi and his colleagues have demonstrated nearly every energy gain and accelerating gradient milestone and high efficiency electron and positron acceleration by plasma wakes and discovered new phenomena such as ionization trapping, betatron radiation and refraction of a relativistic particle beam at plasma-vacuum boundary. Professor Joshi has been honored with APS-DPP’s Excellence in Plasma Physics Award (1996), Maxwell Prize (2006), IEEE’s Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Award (2009) and Marie Sklodowska Curie Award and Medal (2017). He is a Fellow of the APS, IEEE and IoP and an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (2014).