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Abstract: Every high school student knows that electromagnetism and gravity are intellectually adjacent subjects: up to a sign, the Coulombic electrical force and the Newtonian gravitational force are equivalent. What is less well appreciated is that this adjacency extends much further than simple ~1/r^2 force laws. Indeed, the mathematical methods developed to probe the collective behavior of protons and electrons in astrophysical and fusion plasmas are in many cases precisely the same as those needed to describe the dynamics of stars, spiral arms and dark matter in galaxies like the Milky Way. In this talk I will introduce the basic properties of stellar systems and explain how one can describe their dynamics using techniques very familiar to plasma physicists. As examples, I will show how concepts like phase mixing and Landau/O’Neil damping are helping us to understand the nature of dark matter and the observed phase space properties of a billion stars near the Sun.

Hosted by Professor Muni Zhou

Join Zoom Meeting
https://dartmouth.zoom.us/j/92751420885?pwd=QnIwN0RiSGkzMUtjQVZxRlZLMkcwQT09

Meeting ID: 927 5142 0885
Email Physics.Department@dartmouth.edu for passcode.