Plasma Physics

D'Angelo, Frank, Goree, Gurnett, Kletzing, Lonngren, Merlino, Scudder, Skiff, Spangler

Plasma Physics is the study of ionized gases. Plasmas are the most common state of known matter in the universe. Our experimenters have seven labs on campus, and their instruments are on spacecraft, rockets, and the International Space Station. Our research includes experiment, theory, and simulation. Areas include basic science, astronomy, geophysics, and processing plasmas as used in semiconductor manufacturing. Graduate students participate in a weekly plasma physics seminar.		Image gallery
We have the largest number of plasma physics faculty members among all physics departments in the U.S. Our faculty members have strong international reputations, frequently giving invited talks at international conferences and winning grants from a wide range of funding agencies. Our faculty includes five elected fellows of the APS and one member of the National Academy of Sciences. Our labs, and our instruments in space, are unique and world class. We offer a wide choice of research problems, which are diversified among the healthiest and most rapidly-growing topics in plasma physics. Students publish highly-cited papers in the leading journals, and they give talks at major conferences. Plasma physics offers strong job placement opportunities, and our PhD graduates have excellent success in finding the jobs that they most want.

• Basic plasma physics problems, including laboratory simulations of space plasma phenomena, dusty plasmas
• Facilities include two lab rooms with three plasma chambers
• Major equipment includes two Q-machines with magnetic field up to 0.5 T; each machine is dedicated to a single graduate student
• Each student is advised by both D'Angelo and Merlino; students may also be assisted by an electrical engineer and may participate in collaboration with Naval Research Laboratory scientists
• Students develop skills including: vacuum, electronics, data acquisition, machining
• Previous PhDs are now employed in industry, government labs and universities, including a professor and two research scientists
• In most years, grant support is available for multiple RA stipends and student travel to conferences

• Spacecraft: NASA's Polar, investigating the Earth's auroras and upper atmosphere; Japan's Geotail, investigating plasma dynamics of Earth's distant environment; JPL's Galileo, observing Jupiter
• Students may directly operate three cameras on the Polar spacecraft
• Thesis work in spacecraft projects prepares students for post-graduate work at many institutions
• Students also interact with other group members, including three senior research scientists and one senior engineer; and with scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, JPL, ISAS, Max Planck Institute/Lindau, and universities including UCLA, Colorado and New Hampshire
• In most years, grant support is available for multiple RA stipends and student travel to conferences

• Dusty plasmas, strongly-coupled plasmas, plasma processing, optical diagnostics of plasmas, waves in plasmas
• Physics problems are interdisciplinary: condensed matter and plasma physics; experiments involve direct comparisons to theory
• Experiments are performed in ours labs, on aircraft and the International Space Station (ISS)
• Two labs with plasma chambers and optical diagnostics
• Students also interact with group members including two to three postdocs; other faculty and research scientists; collaborators in other countries
• Students develop skills including design, construction, and operation of: vacuum, electronic, optical, and laser systems; programming in various languages; image analysis
• Previous assistants found employment in the semiconductor industry and as academic postdocs; one is now a professor
• In most years, grant support is available for multiple RA stipends and student travel to conferences

• Experimental studies of planetary radio emissions and plasma waves
• Spacecraft data: Voyagers 1 and 2 (now approaching interstellar space); Galileo (in orbit around Jupiter); Cassini (on its way to Saturn); and Cluster (consisting of four spacecraft in Earth orbit)
• Group recently built the hardware to explore the ionospheric plasma of Mars
• Computing facilities dedicated to the group include >4 TB of online data storage for networked computers
• Students analyze data from spacecraft
• Students also interact with other group members, including 4 research scientists, 5 engineers, 6 programmers
• Supervised 50 space plasma physics thesis projects over a period of 37 years; former students now at NASA centers, industry, other universities
• In most years, grant support is available for multiple RA stipends and student travel to conferences

• Plasma processes that occur in the aurora
• Experimental verification of Alfvén wave theory in the laboratory
• Experiments are prepared at Iowa and then performed at UCLA's Large Plasma Device (LAPD) user's facility
• On-campus facilities include: two vacuum chambers, an electronics lab with all equipment newer than 1997
• Students perform both laboratory and rocket experiments
• Students also interact with other group members including two postdocs, a research scientist, as well as scientists at UCLA
• In most years, grant support is available for multiple RA stipends and student travel to conferences

• Solitons and sheaths in plasmas
• Solitons in Schottky-barrier-diode transmission lines

• Basic plasma physics problems, including laboratory simulations of space plasma phenomena, dusty plasmas
• Facilities include two lab rooms with three plasma chambers
• Major equipment includes two Q-machines with magnetic field up to 0.5 T; each machine is dedicated to a single graduate student
• Each student is advised by both D'Angelo and Merlino; students may also be assisted by an electrical engineer and may participate in collaboration with Naval Research Laboratory scientists
• Students develop skills including: vacuum, electronics, data acquisition, machining
• Previous PhDs are now employed in industry, government labs and universities, including a professor and two research scientists
• In most years, grant support is available for multiple RA stipends and student travel to conferences

• Experimental search for collisionless magnetic reconnection mechanisms
• Theoretical study of the role of suprathermal tails in heat transport
• Computing facilities dedicated to the group include a 24-processor computing cluster
• Students develop skills in: writing codes in C, Fortran and IDL, and numerical methods; research is computer-intensive
• Two previous PhD students, placed in three-year postdoc positions at LANL and UC Berkeley
• Students also interact with group members including four software engineers as well as other faculty
• In most years, grant support is available an RA stipend and student travel to conferences

• Experimental topics include experiments for plasma waves and instabilities, laser-induced fluorescence diagnostics of plasmas; student projects are usually mostly experimental and some theory
• Theoretical topics include plasma kinetic theory, momentum flow in ionized gases
• Two labs, including: a 3-meter linear magnetized-plasma device for waves and spectroscopy, single-frequency scanning lasers for high-resolution laser spectroscopy
• Students also interact with group members including a postdoc and students, they participate in the plasma seminar and interact with other theoretical and experimental plasma faculty
• Students develop skills including designing and building apparatus, electronics, computation
• Previous assistants found employment as academic postdocs or in the semiconductor and optics industries; one is now a professor
• In most years, grant support is available for multiple RA stipends and student travel to conferences

• Theory and data analysis, with applications to astrophysical plasmas
• Turbulence in plasmas, nonlinear plasma waves, and interaction of charged particles with waves and turbulence
• Spacecraft data from NASA's ACE spacecraft in the solar wind
• Student projects involve analytic and computational studies of wave and turbulence equations, and tests of theories with spacecraft data
• Students develop skills in numerical methods, writing code in C and other languages
• In most years, grant support is available for RA stipends and student travel to conferences