USA - COURANT

COURANT INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

251 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012

Telephone: +1 212 998 3000
Telefax: +1 212 995 4121
E-mail: struse@cims.nyu.edu

Magneto-Fluid Dynamics Division (Tel.: +1 212 998 3253)

	Weitzner, Harold (Director)	weitzner@cims.nyu.edu
	Ambroso, Annalisa	ambroso@cims.nyu.edu
	Braams, Bas	braams@cims.nyu.edu
	Chang, Choong-Seock	cschang@cims.nyu.edu
	Edelman, Mark	edelman@cims.nyu.edu
	Hameiri, Eliezer	hameiri@cims.nyu.edu
	Leoncini, Xavier	leoncini@cims.nyu.edu
	Strauss, Henry R.	strauss@cims.nyu.edu
	Weber, Stefan	weber@cims.nyu.edu
	Imre, Kaya (visitor)	imre@cims.nyu.edu
	Zaslavsky, George (affiliated)	zaslav@cims.nyu.edu

Computational Fluid Dynamics Division (Tel.: +1 212 998 3237)

	Garabedian, Paul R. (Director)	garabedian@acfcluster.nyu.edu
	Bauer, Frances	bauer@acfcluster.nyu.edu

Research activities:
The Magneto-Fluid Dynamics Division continues to have as its principal goal the development of fusion plasma science. We collaborate with many other fusion and plasma groups throughout the world. We also take seriously our roles of outreach into the larger scientific community and in drawing of ideas and personnel from neighboring disciplines and from non-standard sources. Within the limits of what a relatively small group can do, - we consist of five permanent members, one, to one and one-half post-doctoral visitors, and many short-term visitors - we distribute our efforts across many aspects of plasma physics and allied disciplines. We also work closely with others at the Courant Institute and New York University who are actively involved in fusion plasma physics.

The broad classification of research topics changes very little from one year to the next, analysis of the dynamics of the motion of a single charged particle, theoretical magnetohydrodynamics, computational magnetohydrodynamics, plasma transport theory, application of methods of dynamical systems to interpret experimental turbulent observations, theoretical turbulent modelling, RF wave propagation as applied to plasma heating, transport and flow drive, basic theory of fluid turbulence modelling, fluid dynamics, and molecular structure calculation. With such a diverse range of topics, it should be clear that the group must have many contacts and collaborations outside the group as well as collaboration within the group. The next sections detail work of the past year. A few examples of the diverse collaboration and subjects studied includes:

1. George Zaslavsky (CIMS-NYU) in collaboration with Ben Carreras (ORNL) and others, including H. Weitzner has undertaken to apply sophisticated methods to analyze edge fluctuation data from DIII-D (GA) in order to discover non-Gaussian processes which may have major effects on transport. This analysis is on the one hand a continuation of Zaslavsky's examination of dynamical systems and on the other hand the start of advanced data analysis of turbulence in tokamaks.
2. Choong-Seock Chang previously developed a theory to describe plasma rotation and radial electric fields in tokamaks. This theory has been applied to Alcator-CMOD in collaboration with Bonoli, Rice and Greenwald (MIT). This work reflects continued interest of Chang in RF driven tokamak flow, which is also being applied to DIII-D (GA) and TEXTOR (Juelich).
3. Pellet oblation studies of Henry Strauss, in conjunction with W. Park, E. Belova, and G.Y. Fu (PPPL) and L. Sugiyama (MIT) show the ability of the MH3D codes to simulate experimentally relevant and significant phenomena of the kind seen in DIII-D (GA). Collaboration with IPP-Garching are planned, and they should be able to be applied to ASDEX-UPGRADE (IPP-Garching).
4. Eric Vanden Eijnden, who was trained in plasma physics and plasma turbulence, has been working with A. Majda, P. Kramer, and I. Timofeev (CIMS-NYU) and Weinan E (Princeton University) on exact fluid turbulence models. Such analysis extends the reach of plasma physics beyond its usual community and also develops mathematical tools which may become useful in plasma turbulence studies.
5. Previous work of Bastiaan Braams on scrape-off layer codes and divertor models is now being extended to the description of stellarator divertors in collaboration with R. Schneider (IPP-Garching).
6. The analysis of RF driven flows is being merged into a neoclassical transport analysis by Harold Weitzner in conjunction with L.A. Berry, E.F. Jaeger, and D.B. Batchelor (ORNL).
7. The methods of variational equilibrium and stability analysis of plasma physics are being applied in novel ways in problems of fluid dynamics by E. Hameiri, another example of outreach from the fusion program to neighboring communities.