Collisionless MHD and the Magneto-Rotational Instability

Greg Hammett (Princeton) - Sept. 8 at 12:00 noon

I will start with a tutorial on some interesting collisionless phenomena in plasmas. I will then describe Kulsrud's formulation of collisionless MHD, and fluid closure models for it. Collisionless effects have been found to significantly raise the growth rate of the Magneto-Rotational Instability at long wavelengths and high beta (Quataert, Hammett, Dorland 2002 (ApJ 577, 524), Sharma, Hammett, Quataert 2003 (ApJ 596, 1121), Balbus 2004, astro-ph/0403678). We have modified the ZEUS MHD code to include fluid models of kinetic effects and have begun investigating the nonlinear consequencese on MRI-driven turbulence in acrection disks.

The seminar will be held in 544 Campbell Hall.

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