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NORDITA NEWSLETTER. 2008, ISSUE 3

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ERC Advanced Grant awarded to Professor Axel Brandenburg

Professor Axel Brandenburg's Astrophysical Dynamos (AstroDyn) project has been awarded a five year grant, for a total of ? 2 220 000, from the European Research Council. The ERC Advanced Investigator Grant funding scheme targets exceptional research leaders across all fields of science and enables them to pursue frontier research of their own choice.

Summary of the AstroDyn project

In the last 10 years the dynamo group at Nordita, led by Professor Brandenburg, has been involved in major advances in dynamo theory, i.e. the theory that explains the conversion of kinetic into magnetic energy. In the Sun, for example, an oscillatory magnetic field is generated, but new research now shows that at large magnetic Reynolds numbers this can only happen if the Sun sheds small-scale magnetic twist through the surface while regenerating an interlinked assembly of large-scale poloidal and toroidal magnetic fields. The Sun is believed to accomplish this through coronal mass ejections, which are known shed approximately the required amount of magnetic twist or helicity.

The work at Nordita involves large-scale three-dimensional computer simulations that are suited for making contact with turbulence theory and for improving our physical understanding. The ultimate goal of this research is to understand the solar cycle based on well founded turbulence processes rather than ad hoc assumptions that are untenable. Most of the simulations done within this project make use of the Pencil Code, which is a public domain code that is constantly being improved by around 20 scientists world wide and is being mainained under a central versioning system at Nordita.

The inclusion of the effects of coronal mass ejections into the model is believed to be one of the key factors of future solar dynamo models. Other factors include the recently discovered near-surface shear layer of the Sun, where the shear has the opposite radial gradient than in the bulk of the convection zone, and can lead to equatorward migration of sunspot activity, which was another major problem in understanding the solar dynamo. Finally, the discovery that convection pumps magnetic fields downward and thus opposes magnetic buoyancy losses is another factor that makes the so-called distributed dynamo model viable. Here, the magnetic field resides in the entire convection zone, and is thus not confined to the thin layer just beneath the convection zone, as is still assumed in many models.

Professor John Wettlaufer spending his sabbatical at Nordita

Nordita welcomes Professor John S. Wettlaufer, who is spending his sabbatical at Nordita. He is Bateman Professor of Geophysics & Physics at Yale University. His main interests can best be described as a hybrid between condensed matter theory and experiment, materials physics, and applied mathematics with applications focusing on environmental, geophysical and technological problems. The scales range from atomic to meters, with implications on much larger scales. Of particular interest is the growth of ice from vapor, pure and binary melts, phase-antiphase boundary migration, and the role of surface melting in the migration of negative crystals, grain boundaries, and as an underlying cause of frost heave.

His stay at Nordita is supported jointly by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Stockholm Astrobiology Graduate School, and Nordita. He recently gave an AlbaNova and Nordita Colloquium on The Quantum Electrodynamics of Snowflakes, Ice skating, Exobiology and other such matters. All our colloquia, including this one, are recorded and available as streaming video or to download.


New staff members at Nordita

Nordita welcomes a new assistant professor:

Dr. Ralf Eichhorn, Germany, comes to Nordita from the University of Bielefeld. His research includes the theory of transport processes in non-equilibrium systems, with applications to biophysical systems. He will join us in January 2009.

We also welcome six new Nordita Fellows:

  • Diego Chialva, Greece, works in high-energy physics on string theory and cosmology. He comes to us from Uppsala University in January 2009.
  • Kristina Giesel, Germany, works on cosmology and canonical quantum gravity. She is arriving from the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam in October.
  • Mats Horsdal, Norway, works in condensed matter physics on the quantum Hall effect. He came to Nordita from the University of Oslo.
  • Alexander Hubbard USA, works on astrophysical accretion disks. He will be arriving from the University of Rochester in October.
  • Jonas Larson, Sweden, works on condensed matter physics including the theory of ultra-cold atoms. He was previously at Institute de Ci`encies Fot`oniques in Barcelona.
  • Yassir Roudi, Iran, came to Nordita from University College London, and is working on neural networks.

along with two new Visiting Fellows, who will be coming from the University of Iceland in October:

  • Alexander Wijns, Belgium, works in high-energy physics on string theory and supersymmetric field theory.
  • Tobias Zingg, Switzerland, works in high-energy physics on string theory.
The recent and anticipated additional staff (see below) will lead to a welcome increase in the level of scientific activities at Nordita but at the same time it puts pressure on our already strained housing facilities. We have already expanded into a neighboring office building but we will need more space soon!

Upcoming Programs and Workshops

Turbulence and Oscillations in Accretion Discs

An extended workshop on Turbulence and Oscillations in Accretion Discs will be held at Nordita during the first half of October, and is combined with a 2-day conference during 9-10 October. Scientists from Czech Republic, Finland, Japan, Poland, Sweden, the UK and the US have signed up.

The workshop is organized by Marek Abramowicz (Gothenburg), Paola Rebusco (MIT), and Axel Brandenburg (Nordita).

A detailed program for the conference is now available on the workshop page. Please sign up and visit the page regularly for updates.

Geometrical Aspects of String Theory

The program is organized by and Maxim Zabzine (Uppsala).

Computational Engineering across Length and Time Scales

The scientific program Computational Engineering across Length and Time Scales has been moved from February 2009 to November 2009.

Recent Programs

Ice and Water in the Universe: from Astrobiology to Terrestrial Bodies

An extended workshop, or mini-program, on Ice & Water in the Universe was held at Nordita, September 15 - 26, in connection with the 7 months sabbatical stay of John S. Wettlaufer. This activity started with a 3 day conference with altogether 14 talks, followed by more relaxed gatherings on a daily basis with one or two talks, and attracted visitors from the US, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US.

Video recordings are available for most of the talks. Just click on the website of the workshop.

TeV Scale Physics and Dark Matter

This was a two month program, June 1 - July 31, where a total of 60 scientists from 16 nationalities participated. The peak participation was around the time of the associated Nordic Workshop on LHC and Beyond which offered on interaction channel between theorists and experimentalists. Please see the program webpage for more information.

The program was coordinated by Katri Huitu (Helsinki) and Per Osland (Bergen).

Invitation to propose Nordita Scientific Programs for 2010 - 2011

Nordita invites members of the scientific community in the Nordic countries and worldwide to propose Scientific Programs for the year 2010 and early 2011.

A Nordita Scientific Program is an extended workshop where a limited number of scientists work together on specific topics for a period 1-2 months. Up to 25 resident participants can be accommodated at any given time. This includes a core of 8-12 internationally recognized leaders in the subject area of the program, 5-8 invited Nordic scientists, and a limited number of other applicants, including accompanying postdoctoral fellows and PhD students. Two or three principal investigators are responsible for coordinating a Program.

The deadline for submitting proposals is December 1, 2008. More information.

Open positions

Tenured Professor in theoretical physics

Application deadline: 3 November 2008
For details see www.nordita.org/people/positions/archive

Assistant Professor in theoretical high-energy physics

Application deadline: 15 November 2008
For details see www.nordita.org/people/positions/archive

Nordita Fellowships

Application deadline: 15 November 2008
For details see www.nordita.org/people/positions/archive

Positions in connection with the AstroDyn project

The European Research Council has decided to fund a concentrated 5-year effort at Nordita in Stockholm to improve our understanding of astrophysical dynamos. For details, see the project page on Astrophysical Dynamos, http://www.nordita.org/~brandenb/AstroDyn/. In connection with this 5-year project several positions will become available.

Four PhD positions (4 years)

http://www.nordita.org/~brandenb/AstroDyn/positions/PhD-positions.html
Application deadline: 10 December 2008

Four post-doc positions (2 years, 2 to be filled in 2009)

http://www.nordita.org/~brandenb/AstroDyn/positions/post-doc.html
Application deadline: 10 December 2008

One Assistant Professor (4 years, with the possibility of a 5th year)

http://www.nordita.org/~brandenb/AstroDyn/positions/assistant-professor.html
Application deadline: 15 January 2009

Several visiting professorships

All these positions are supported by an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council; see http://erc.europa.eu/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.display&topicID=66.
We are currently in the process of recruiting 4 PhD students, 2 post-docs, and 1 assistant professor (forskarassistent), who are expected to take up their positions during 2009.

Nordita Board

On July 1st Professor Anders Flodström, University Chancellor for the Swedish universities, replaced Professor Cecilia Jarlskog of Lund University as the national representative from Sweden on the Nordita Board. At the same time as we extend a warm welcome to Prof. Flodström we thank Prof. Jarlskog for her long-standing service and commitment to Nordita.

A meeting of Nordita's Scientific Advisory Committee was called on August 21 - 22. During the two day meeting committee members met with members of the Nordita Board, representatives of the local universities and Nordita's administration and staff.

The next meeting of the Nordita Board will be in Copenhagen on October 10 - 11, 2008.

Nordita Preprints

→ Link to electronic preprints: www.nordita.org/preprints

2008-015
Cold Fermi atomic gases in a pumped optical resonator
Jonas Larson, Giovanna Morigi, Maciej Lewenstein
Phys. Rev. A 78, 023815 (2008)
2008-016
Taking the Temperature of a Black Hole
Erling J. Brynjólfsson, Larus Thorlacius
J. High Energy Phys. 0809, 066 (2008)
2008-017
Interband physics in an ultra-cold Fermi gas in an optical lattice
J.-P. Martikainen, E. Lundh, and T. Paananen
Phys. Rev. A 78, 023607 (2008).
2008-018
Microreversible recycled chemical systems. A comment to ``A Re-Examination of Reversibility in Reaction Models for the Spontaneous Emergence of Homochirality
Raphaël Plasson
Accepted to J. Phys. Chem. B
2008-019
Jahn-Teller systems from a cavity QED perspective
Jonas Larson
Phys. Rev. A 78, 033833 (2008)
2008-020
Energetic and entropic analysis of mirror symmetry breaking process in recycled microreversible chemical system
Raphaël Plasson and Hugues Bersini
Submitted to J. Phys. Chem. B
2008-021
One-dimensional phase transitions in a two-dimensional optical lattice
M. Rehn, S. Bergkvist, A. Rosengren, R. Saers, M. Zélan, E. Lundh, and A. Kastberg
Eur. Phys. J. D 49, 223-230 (2008)
2008-022
Magnetic quenching of alpha and diffusivity tensors in helical turbulence
A. Brandenburg, K.-H. Rädler, M. Rheinhardt, K. Subramanian
ApJ Lett (in press)
2008-023
Noise correlations of the ultracold Fermi gas in an optical lattice
T. Paananen, T. K. Koponen, P. Torma, and J.-P. Martikainen
Phys. Rev. A 77, 053602 (2008)
2008-024
Large-scale dynamos in turbulent convection with shear
P. J. Käpylä, M. J. Korpi, A. Brandenburg
Astron. Astrophys. Letters (submitted)
2008-025
Quantum interference structures in trapped ion dynamics beyond the Lamb-Dicke and rotating wave approximations
Dong Wang, Tony Hansson, Asa Larson, Hans O. Karlsson, Jonas Larson
Phys. Rev. A 77, 053808 (2008)
2008-026
Rabi oscillations in a quantum dot-cavity system coupled to a non-zero temperature phonon bath
Jonas Larson, Hector Moya-Cessa
Phys. Scr. 77, 065704 (2008)
2008-027
Alpha effect and diffusivity in helical turbulence with shear
Dhrubaditya Mitra, Petri J. Käpylä, Reza Tavakol, Axel Brandenburg
Astron. Astrophys. Letters (submitted)
2008-028
Lambda effect from forced turbulence simulations
P. J. Käpylä & A. Brandenburg
Astron. Astrophys. 488, 9-23 (2008)
2008-029
Matching gauge theory and string theory in a decoupling limit of AdS/CFT
Troels Harmark, Kristjan R. Kristjansson, Marta Orselli
2008-030
A unified approach to structure factors and neutrino processes in nucleon matter
G.I. Lykasov, C.J. Pethick, A. Schwenk
2008-031
Quantum fluctuations in the mazer
Jonas Larson
2008-032
Cooper problem in a lattice
J.-P. Martikainen
accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. A
2008-033
The dual role of shear in large-scale dynamos
A. Brandenburg
Astron. Nachr. 329, 725-731 (2008)
2008-034
Turbulent protostellar discs
Axel Brandenburg
Physica Scripta T 130, 014016 (2008)
2008-035
Large-scale dynamos at low magnetic Prandtl numbers
Axel Brandenburg
Astrophys. J. (submitted)
2008-036
A growing dynamo from the velocity field of a saturated dynamo
Andreas Tilgner, Axel Brandenburg
Monthly Notices Roy. Astron. Soc., submittted (2008)
2008-037
Coupled two-component atomic gas in an optical lattice
Jonas Larson, Jani-Petri Martikainen
2008-038
Building the full PMNS Matrix from six independent Majorana-type phases
Gustavo C. Branco, M. N. Rebelo
2008-039
Domain walls, fusion rules and conformal field theory in the quantum Hall regime
Eddy Ardonne
2008-040
Nonlinear aspects of astrobiological research
Axel Brandenburg
Encyclopedia of Complexity and System Science
2008-041
Mean-field effects in the Galloway-Proctor flow
Karl-Heinz Rädler, Axel Brandenburg
Monthly Notices Roy. Astron. Soc., submittted (2008)

Items for Nordita News

If you have information about meetings or other items that would be useful to include in Nordita News, please send it to Anne Jifält, Nordita, email: anne@kth.se.

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