Personal Stuff

 

INTERESTS: Running, Biking, Science Fiction, Music, Homebrewing, Physics, Math.

CURRENT RESEARCH: Shear Alfvén waves.  We are conducting experiments in the LArge Plasma Device (LAPD) at UCLA.  We are currently trying to experimentally test the dispersion relation in both kinetic (Vte>Va) and inertial (Vte<Va) limits.  Future experiments will deal with attempts to modify the electron distribution function using shear Alfvén waves in order to address the issue of auroral electron acceleration by shear Alfvén waves.

PAST RESEARCH: While at Lawrence University of Wisconsin, I studied the properties of a pure-electron plasma in a toroidal magnetic field. More specifically, I studied oscillations of the plasma that appeared in the summer of 2000 while performing trapping experiments.  Study of these oscillations was conducted from the summer of 2001 through the 2001-2002 academic year.  This project consisted of designing and constructing a series of wall probes placed around the vacuum chamber both toroidally and poloidally to examine the large-scale spatial structure of these oscillations.  The spatial and temporal structure of these oscillations were examined for a variety of different background neutral gas pressures as well as several different background neutral gases.