Soutenance de thèse Davide Manzini - 27 septembre 2024 à 14h00 au LPP-Jussieu

J'ai le plaisir de vous annoncer que ma soutenance de thèse aura lieu le vendredi 27 septembre à 14h00 dans l'amphi 25 à Jussieu. Le sujet et un résumé sont fournis ci-dessous. N'hésitez pas à venir, vous êtes tous les bienvenus! Et n'oubliez pas de venir au pot de these qui suivra les délibérations du jury dans la salle de réunion du LPP au 5ème étage!

Au plaisir de vous y retrouver,

Davide
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Titre  

Turbulence and Heating in Collisionless Astrophysical Plasmas

Résumé

Astrophysical plasmas are typically collisionless, meaning they can deviate significantly from local thermodynamic equilibrium. As a result, different particle species, such as protons and electrons, can maintain distinct temperatures. Additionally, most astrophysical plasmas are turbulent: energy injected at large scales cascades non-linearly and is eventually dissipated by kinetic processes that heat the plasma.
Understanding the interplay between turbulence and heating, particularly how turbulent energy is partitioned between protons and electrons remains one of the major challenges in this field. Would turbulence push the plasma toward thermodynamic equilibrium? Or would it reinforce thermal disequilibrium?

In this thesis, we tackle this problem using an innovative theoretical approach (scale filtering) that we apply to numerical simulations and data from NASA's MMS mission measured in near-Earth space. This approach enables us to measure the scale-by-scale turbulent heating rates for electrons and protons thus bringing new answers to the above questions and better constraining proposed theoretical models of differential protons vs. electrons heating in astrophysical plasmas.

Jury:

William H. Matthaeus,  Prof. University of Delaware
Robert Wicks,  Prof. Northumbria University
Christopher H. K. Chen,  Queen Mary University of London
Denise Perrone, ASI - Italian Space Agency
Frédéric Daigne,  Prof. Sorbonne Université, IAP
Martin Lemoine, Directeur de Recherche, CNRS, APC

Directeurs de thèse:

Fouad Sahraoui, Directeur de Recherche, CNRS - Prof. École Polytechnique
Francesco Califano, Prof. University of Pisa