People
From Space Science Theory Group
Research Scientist, Space Science Center of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire. Dr. Bessho received his Ph.D. in Science from Nagoya University, Japan, in 2001. His thesis was "Production of Ultrarelativistic Electrons by an Oblique Magnetosonic Shock Wave", which was a study of electron acceleration by particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation. His research interests are in a method of PIC simulation, particle acceleration in a shock wave, nonlinear wave theory, magnetic reconnection, and space plasmas.
Paul Professor, Space Science Center of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space and Department of Physics, University of New Hampshire. Professor Bhattacharjee received his Ph.D. at Princeton University (1981) in theoretical plasma physics from the Department of Astrophysical Sciences. He and his students and postdoctoral colleagues have authored over 200 publications with broad applications to laboratory, space and astrophysical plasmas. At the University of Iowa, he has received the James Van Allen Natural Sciences Fellowship (1996) and the Faculty Scholar (1997-2000) award. He has served as Associate Editor of the Geophysical Research Letters and the Physics of Plasmas, as Chair of the Topical Group in Plasma Astrophysics of the American Physical Society, and on various prize and fellowship committees. He is presently Vice-Chair of the Division of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society and Senior Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research – Space Physics. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1993, and a Fellow of the American Association of Advancement of Science in 2000. Professor Bhattacharjee's research interests include: magnetohydrodynamics, magnetic reconnection, turbulence and singularity formation, kinetic theory, free-electron lasers, and dusty plasmas.
Professor Chandran received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1997. His research is in the areas of theoretical plasma physics and theoretical astrophysics, particularly problems at the interface between these two fields. His main interests are plasma turbulence, the role of turbulence in the solar corona and other astrophysical settings, and the evolution of baryonic matter in clusters of galaxies. He has also worked on cosmic-ray propagation, particle acceleration at shocks, and the origin of astrophysical magnetic fields. His research program is supported by grants from NASA, NSF, and DOE, and offers research opportunities for undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars.
Research Assistant Professor, Physics Department and the Space Science Center of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire.
Li-Jen Chen received her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Washington with a theoretical dissertation on electrostatic solitary waves in collisionless plasmas. She conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Iowa on the subjects of magnetospheric substorms, electrostatic solitary waves, and dispersive Alfven waves and their interaction with auroral electrons. She joined the Space Plasma Theory Group in December, 2005, and began to study magnetic reconnection. Her main interest in magnetic reconnection includes particle acceleration and structures of the diffusion region that affect the energy conversion rate and energy partition. In addition to reconnection, her current research interests include dynamics of electrostatic structures and how they influence plasma bulk properties at current layers, propagation of dispersive Alfven waves and field line resonances. She takes an approach that integrates theories, plasma simulations and laboratory experiments with space observations to address un-answered questions in her research areas of interest.
Research Assistant Professor, Space Plasma Physicist, Ph.D., University of Iowa. John Dorelli received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, where he was engaged in theoretical space plasma research under the guidance of Professor Jack Scudder. While at Iowa, he developed a new finite difference method for the solution of the steady state Rosenbluth-MacDonald-Judd Fokker-Planck equation. The new method was used to model electron heat flow at the gravitationally confined base of the solar corona. In addition, he was involved in software development in support of the Hydra instrument on NASA's Polar spacecraft. His involvement in that mission -- which consisted initially of writing instrument calibration and data visualization software -- began in 1996, when Polar was launched, and continues to the present. After leaving Iowa in 1999, Dr. Dorelli took a postdoctoral position at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he changed focus and began working on the problem of collisionless magnetic reconnection. While at LANL, he developed a new finite difference code to solve the resistive Hall magnetohydrodynamics equations in two dimensions. This new code was used to address the issue of how the Hall reconnection rate scales with the ion inertial length -- an issue which has important implications for the reconnection time scale problem. After several years, Dr. Dorelli left LANL for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where he continued research in reconnection theory at the Community Coordinated Modeling Center, collaborating with the center's director, Michael Hesse, to address the reconnection time scale problem in the context of Earth's dayside magnetopause. It was while at GSFC that Dr. Dorelli began a collaboration with UNH Professor Joachim Raeder, the developer of a global magnetospheric simulation code which is maintained at the CCMC. In late 2003, Dr. Dorelli moved to UNH to continue his research on the physics of magnetic reconnection at Earth's magnetopause. More recently, he has been investigating -- using a combination of analytic work, computer simulations and spacecraft data anlysis -- the global, three-dimensional properties of magnetic reconnection at Earth's dayside magnetosphere.
Research Professor, Physics Department and the Space Science Center of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space. Prior to joining UNH in 1984, Dr. Forbes worked as a research fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and before that he held a postdoctoral appointment at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He has also worked as a visiting scientist at the Meudon Observatory in France, the Isaac Newton Institute of Cambridge University in England, and the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is a member of the American Astronomical Society, the Royal Astronomical Society (UK), the American Geophysical Union, the European Geophysical Society, and the International Astronomical Union. Dr. Forbes' research interests are primarily in the areas of magnetic reconnection, coronal mass ejections, and solar flares. He is co-author with E.R. Priest of "Magnetic Reconnection - MHD Theory and Applications" published by Cambridge University Press. Dr. Forbes has authored, or co-authored, over 100 articles, and he currently serves as associate editor for the journals "Solar Physics" and "Journal of Geophysical Research".
Professor Emeritus, Physics Department and the Space Science Center of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire.
Office phone: 603-862-3869. Email: joe.hollweg@unh.edu
Research Interests: Dynamics of the solar atmosphere and solar wind, waves in plasmas.
The Sun's atmosphere exhibits a wide range of complex dynamic phenomena. At any instant of time there are about one million high-speed jets of gas, called spicules, on the Sun. There is a continual outflow, called the solar wind, of solar plasma into interplanetary space. The region just below the Sun's visible surface is filled with sound waves. The solar corona and the underlying chromosphere are constantly in motion. And there are frequent impulsive releases of energy, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. The solar atmosphere contains complex configurations of magnetic field which are also in a constant state of agitation. The magnetic and kinetic energy in the Sun's atmosphere is continually being converted into heat. The corona is heated to several million Kelvins, and some of this thermal energy enables the solar wind to be accelerated to high speeds and escape the Sun's gravity. The chromosphere and spicules are also heated to more modest temperatures. But the details of these processes are not understood.
Our research is concerned with developing theoretical models for the sources of momentum and energy that are required to explain the observed motions and heating. We have emphasized the roles of waves, which transport both momentum and energy and can therefore accelerate and heat the solar plasma. Understanding the physics of waves in the solar atmosphere is challenging. The waves propagate in a very structured medium, and they undergo complicated nonlinear interactions leading to shock formation, instabilities, and turbulence.
Our program has been supported by grants from NASA and the NSF . Hollweg has also been involved with experimental programs on the SOHO mission.
Hollweg was awarded the 1992 James Arthur Prize for Solar Physics by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and in 2002 he was elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union "for outstanding research on topics throughout the corona and solar wind and for consistently clear elucidation of the fundamental physical processes involved". He officially retired in 2006, but still maintains an office at UNH and continues his research projects and collaborations.
Research Professor, Physics Department and the Space Science Center of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire. Professor Isenberg received his S.B. in Physics from MIT in 1971, and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago in 1976. Following postdoc appointments at the University of Arizona and UCSD, he joined the Theory Group in the Space Science Center at UNH in 1981 to work on the acceleration of the solar wind. His current research interests still include solar wind heating and acceleration, as well as theoretical modeling of solar prominance eruptions, kinetic wave-particle interactions, and the dynamics of interstellar pickup ions.
Research Scientist, Physics Department and the Space Science Center of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire.
Research Scientist, Physics Department and the Space Science Center of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire.
Professor, Space Science Center and Dept. of Physics, University of New Hampshire. Prof. Lee received his PhD. from the University of Chicago (1971) in theoritical space plasma Physics. He is the author of over 120 publications in referred journals and conference proceedings. He is served as the associate editor of the JGR-Space Physics reviews of Geo-physics and on numerous NASA, National Research Council and NSF panels and committees apart from being a long time coinvestigator in the NASA sun earth connection theory program. He is the the associate scientist on three space craft experiments: CELIAS/SOHO, PLASTIC/STEREO AND IBEX. In 1998, he was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union. Professor Lee's research interests are focussed on the transport and acceleration of energy particles in the heliosphere and include the process of diffusive shock acceleration, plasma instabilities and the solar modualtion of galactic cosmic rays.
Research Scientist, Physics Department and the Space Science Center of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire.
Yuri Litvinenko is a Research Assistant Professor in the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, where he is a member of the UNH Solar-Terrestrial Theory Group. Prior to that, he completed his dissertation entitled "Aspects of Particle Acceleration in Solar Flares" and held postdoctoral and Research Scientist positions at UNH. Dr. Litvinenko's research interests are in the areas of theoretical space plasma physics, including investigations of energy release, magnetohydrodynamic motions, and particle acceleration in space. While dreaming of retirement in Costa Rica, he has authored or co-authored more than 50 publications that primarily address flares and other active phenomena on the Sun and flare stars. This work is supported by various grants from National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Current research projects also involve collaboration with scientists at other institutions, including the Department of Mathematics at the University of Waikato (New Zealand) and the Research Centre for Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Sydney (Australia).
Research Assistant Professor, Space Science Center and Department of Physics, University of New Hampshire. Dr. Ng received his Ph.D. degree from Auburn University in 1994. His research interests are in theoretical/computational plasma physics, mainly with phenomena related to plasma waves, with applications in space science and fusion research. He has worked on magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, heating of the solar corona, magnetic reconnection, field-line resonances in ionoshpere-magnetosphere, landau damping and BGK solutions of electrostatic plasma waves, singularity formation in hydrodynamics, free electron lasers, mode conversion, and radiation in classical electrodynamics.
Research Scientist, Space Science Center and Department of Physics, University of New Hampshire.
John Podesta received his PhD in Mathematics from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. He started his career in space science at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in 2004 where he conducted theoretical and experimental research on solar wind turbulence. He joined the UNH Space Science Center in 2007 and is actively involved in the development of direct numerical simulations of incompressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. His scientific interests include solar physics, space physics, solar wind research, spacecraft data analysis, plasma turbulence, and computational physics.
Research interests: Space physics, space weather solar-terrestrial relationships, plasmas and magnetic fields in space, solar wind - magnetosphere - ionosphere - thermosphere coupling, geomagnetic activity, geomagnetic storms and substorms, solar induced effects on climate, large scale modeling of magnetospheres, data assimilation, cometary physics, computational fluid dynamics, numerical methods, high performance computing.
I received a B.S. in Geophysics and Applied Mathematics (a.k.a. as Diplom Geophysiker in German) from the University of Cologne (West Germany, back then) in 1985. Subsequently I joined Professor F. M. Neubauer's GIOTTO magnetometer team at the University of Cologne as a graduate student. The GIOTTO satellite was launched in July 1985 and encountered comet P/Halley in March of 1986. It was the first spacecraft ever to come close enough to a cometary nucleus to take images and it was the first and only spacecraft so far to enter the magnetic field free inner coma of a comet. A recent NASA follow-up called CONTOUR unfortunately exploded in space, so GIOTTO will keep that distinction for a while. I completed my thesis on cometary physics and received my Ph.D. in 1989. In 1990 I joined M. Ashour-Abdalla's group at UCLA to start with magnetospheric modeling. I devoleped a new magnetosphere - ionosphere model from scratch. It was the first magnetosphere model that was parallelized for the new class of message passing massive parallel machines (which was at that time a 32 node Intel IPSC860 machine with 8MB memory per node) which allowed for simulations of much larger scale than previously possible. I used the model for the first modeling studies of the distant magnetotail and the first model comparisons with Geotail in situ data. In 1999 I coupled the model with Tim Fuller-Rowell's (NOAA/SEC) CTIM model of the ionosphere - thermosphere system. It so became the first Geospace model with complete coverage from the magnetosphere to the upper atmosphere and it was used extensively for the study of geomagnetic storms. The coupled model, which is also knowm as the 'UCLA/NOAA magnetosphere - ionosphere - thermosphere model' was introduced into the Community Coordinated Modeling Center ( CCMC ) in 2001, where it is available for the science community for model runs on demand. In 2003 I accepted a joint EOS/Physics faculty position at UNH. The development of the geospace model continues and it will now become the 'OpenGGCM', which stands for 'Open Geospace General Circulation Model'. I believe that best progress in understanding geospace can be made by combining observations with modeling. Towards that end I am part of NASA's Science and Technology Mission Definition Team for a Magnetospheric Constellation ( MC ) mission, which will for the first time provide a global coverage of at least part of the magnetosphere. Leading up to MC, which will not be launched before a decade hence, is the THEMIS mission, led by V. Angelopoulos (UC Berkeley), of which I am a Co-I. Of course, combining the data from multi satellite missions optimally with global models requires the use of data assimilation techniques, which has now become an active research topic in magnetospheric modeling and which is also pursued in my group. Besides studying the magnetosphere I am also interested in understanding how the sun influences Earth's climate by modulating the cosmic ray flux and thus cloud formation.
Research Scientist. Brian earned his B.S. in physics and mathematics at Westminster College in New Wilmington, PA in 2003. He recently (2008) completed his Ph.D. work in plasma physics at Dartmouth College. His research interests include magnetic reconnection and turbulence in plasmas.
Research Scientist, Physics Department and the Space Science Center of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire.
Bernard J. Vasquez Research Associate Professor, Space Science Center and Department of Physics, University of New Hamsphire and member of the UNH Solar Terrestrial Theory Group. Dr. Vasquez completed his dissertation in Astronomy entitled "Nonlinear Wave Evolution in a Dispersive Plasma: Application to Rotational Discontinuities" at the University of Maryland, College Park with Prof. K. Papadopoulos and Prof. P. Cargill in 1992. He joined UNH in 1993 as a post-doctoral researcher. Vasquez's research interest are primarily in the area of solar wind, magnetopause, magnetic clouds, waves, discontinuities, ion kinetics, reconnection, and numerical simulations. He has authored or co-authered over 20 published papers.
Research Scientist, Space Science Center of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire. Dr. Hongang Yang obtained his Ph.D. in National Science from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2006. His thesis was "Simulation studies on the Hall current effect in the magnetic reconnection and magnetic flux rope structures in the magnetotail", and he mainly uses resistive and Hall MHD simulations. After a half-year's postdoctoral work, he came to join Prof. Bhattacharjee. His research interests include MHD theory, magnetic reconnection and magnetotail dynamics.
