ECHO, ECHo, Echo, echo... When echoes overwhelm Landau damping

Physics Colloquium 6th May 2016 delivered by Professor William Dorland The Liouville equation describing a collection of charged particles is time-reversible. In the weakly coupled limit, one can reduce this equation to a Fokker-Planck equation, which is irreversible. The problem of the fate of electromagnetic field fluctuations in a plasma in the limit of very weak irreversibility was addressed by Landau, who demonstrated that as long as there are some collisions (even if very rare), and in the absence of sources, gradients, etc, typical field fluctuations are damped with an easily calculated “collisionless” damping rate -- this is Landau damping. The energy of the field fluctuations is converted to particle energy; there is irreversible heating. Landau’s calculation is fine in the limit of small amplitude fluctuations, but what happens when the plasma is turbulent? I will show that in a typical nonlinear system (relevant to many physical observations), Landau damping is overwhelmed and ultimately arrested by turbulent “echoes”. This finding has important implications for detailed predictions of the heating (and in some cases, for the luminosity) of some interesting astrophysical plasmas.

Om Podcasten

The Department of Physics public lecture series. An exciting series of lectures about the research at Oxford Physics take place throughout the academic year. Looking at topics diverse as the creation of the universe to the science of climate change. Features episodes previously published as: (1) 'Oxford Physics Alumni': "Informal interviews with physics alumni at events, lectures and other alumni related activities." (2) 'Physics and Philosophy: Arguments, Experiments and a Few Things in Between': "A series which explores some of the links between physics and philosophy, two of the most fundamental ways with which we try to answer our questions about the world around us. A number of the most pertinent topics which bridge the disciplines are discussed - the nature of space and time, the unpredictable results of quantum mechanics and their surprising consequences and perhaps most fundamentally, the nature of the mind and how far science can go towards explaining and understanding it. Featuring interviews with Dr. Christopher Palmer, Prof. Frank Arntzenius, Prof. Vlatko Vedral, Dr. David Wallace and Prof. Roger Penrose."