Physics Seminar by Earl Scime, PhD

Earl Scime, Ph.D.
Oleg D. Jefimenko Professor of Physics and Astronomy
West Virginia University

“Understanding Plasmas: Insights from Phase Space”

Plasma systems include everything from the nanoscale structures etched into silicon wafer in processing plasmas to the accretion disk around black holes. What makes plasmas more interesting to study, and more challenging to understand, than conventional fluids is the addition of long-range electric and magnetic forces that lead to collective motion of the constituent charged particles. It is at the kinetic scale, scales smaller than the particle gyro motion around magnetic field, that energy in fields is often transferred to the charged particles. The study of energy transfer to the particles in the plasma requires detailed measurements of the complete phase space (3D position and 3D velocity) of the plasma constituents. In space plasmas, this goal is readily accomplished with instruments aboard spacecraft. Recent space missions provide many examples of kinetic scale measurements that have advanced our understanding of the governing physics for those systems. In the laboratory, phase space measurements at the gyroradius scale are much more challenging. The PHAse Space MApping (PHASMA) experiment at West Virginia University was designed to enable unique, non-perturbative, optical measurements of multi-dimensional ion and electron phase space measurements at the kinetic scale. I will describe some recent experiments in PHASMA focused on a common phenomena in plasmas known as magnetic reconnection and how phase space measurements have provided detailed insight into the physics that underlies the magnetic reconnection process.

THURSDAY, APRIL 16 | 12:00 P.M.
MARA AUDITORIUM | MASTERS HALL ROOM 110
Sponsored by: The Department of Physics and EPACC

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