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I will briefly review the physics of the saturation of kinetic instabilities due to wave trapping, and the role of collisions in wave-particle resonant interaction. I will provide a general introduction to the delta-f method, then discuss some of the difficulties in extending delta-f method to cases with collisions, and show how the introduction of a convenient tool (the marker distribution in extended phase space) overcomes such difficulties. I will then try to apply the new method to the simulation of a recent TFTR experiment and discuss the result.

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WINDMI is a nonlinear dynamical model for the coupled Solar-Wind--Magnetosphere--Ionosphere system. The model couples the four basic energy components of the night-side magnetotail (lobe magnetic energy, current sheet ExB energy, parallel kinetic energy, and thermal energy) to the ionosphere by the nightside region 1 currents (substorm current wedge). It includes the large ion gyroradius kinetic physics in the quasineutral sheet that converts ExB convection to thermal energy through the chaotic conductivity, and the finite parallel heat flux neglected by MHD. The model predicts both the state of the geotail and the ionospheric westward electrojet index from the value of the solar wind speed. In the absence of solar wind driving and ionospheric damping the model conserves energy and is Hamiltonian. With solar wind driving and ionospheric damping the system is consistent with Kirchhoff's rules expressing the conservation of charge and energy. This ensures that the solar wind in! put power is divided into physically realizable sub power components, a property not shared by signal processing filters for instance. WINDMI provides a consistent mathematical framework that can be used to investigate different possible scenarios for the evolution of the driven Wind-Magnetosphere-Ionosphere system. We will report on three studies of such models: (1) lobe stored magnetic energy as a function of the IMF and solar wind dynamic pressure, (2) the role of the nonlinear ionospheric conductivities and (3) the change in dynamics with the nature of the unloading mechanism, as for example the near Earth neutral line.

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The most popular theory of solar system formation states that the nine planets accumlated from a disk of gas nd dust orbiting the Sun. N-body simulations of the final stages of planet formation from several hundred planetary embryos yield satisfactory results in the inner solar system, but completely fail to form massive planets in the outer solar system. The problem is that bodies in the outer solar system are weakly bound to the Sun and widely dispersed. Mutual gravitational interactions in the outer solar system produce large velocity dispersions, small collision cross sections, and stalled planetary growth.

A possible solution to this problem is the addition of collective gravitational wave dynamics in the disk. Planetary embryos tend to excite waves in the disk which can strongly damp the velocity dispersion of the larger bodies, leading to larger collision cross sections and more rapid planetary growth. Although the theory of wave-planet interactions is fairly mature, practical techniques for including wave-planet interactions in N-body simulations remain to be developed. I will discuss a reduced description of wave-planet interactions that is somewhat similar to reduced descriptions of wave-particle interactions that are used in plasma physics simulations. The goal of this talk is to draw useful analogies between the methods of plasma physics and the methods of solar system dynamics and to facillitate the exchange of ideas between these two disciplines of classical physics.

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The talk will present experiences with parallelizing and running a 3D gyrokinetic flux tube code on the Origin 2000 at ACL, LANL. The parallellization and performance of the code will be discussed. As introduction, a brief overview of parallel computing will be presented. This will cover some terminology, basic architectures of massively parallel machines, parallel schemes and philosophies, and some MPI.

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I will discuss the derivation and results for a one-dimensional gyrofluid model of Alfven waves in the Magnetosphere. This model is derived from the drift-kinetic equation and it accounts for the effect of a dipole field beta variation. Interesting results include a realistic wave period, and significant electric field fluctuations at the ionosphere-magnetosphere boundary which could contribute to acceleration of auroral electrons.

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SOHO has been the flagship solar observatory of the European Space Agency and NASA since it began service in April, 1996. Its remarkable discoveries and nearly flawless performance for two years induced agencies to grant an extended mission beginning after its first two years. In late June, 1998 within the span of a few hours, the one billion dollar mission started spinning out of control and contact was lost for weeks. It has since been found, communications are restablished, and a painstaking "healing" process is underway that may restore much of the observatory's function.

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Substorms are always observed during the main phase of magnetic storms. In the expansion phase of each substorm ions and electrons suddenly appear at synchronous orbit, accelerated by the collapse of the tail-like field. This correlation has led many researchers to believe that storms are a consequence of the ring current produced by the drift of these particles. However, studies of the Dst index which measures the strength of the ring current show that injection occurs before the expansion phase, and that Dst actually decreases in strength at expansion onset. What then is the role of substorms in producing magnetic storms?

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A tokamak sawtooth crash phase has been studied numerically By starting from a concentric equilibrium, it has been shown that the evolution through an $m/n=1/1$ magnetic island induces secondary high-$ n$ ballooning, (Rayleigh-Taylor-like) instabilities. The magnetic island evolution gives rise to convection of the pressure inside the inversion radius and builds up a steep pressure gradient across the island separatrix, or the current sheet, and thereby triggers ballooning instabilities below the threshold for the axisymmetric equilibrium. Due to the onset of secondary ballooning modes, concomitant fine scale vortices and magnetic stochasticity are generated. These effects produce flows across the current sheet, and thereby modify the $ m=1$ driven magnetic reconnection process. The resultant interaction of the high-$ n$ ballooning modes with the magnetic reconnection process is discussed.

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Ice, being an important substance to our life, possesses unique physical properties which attract attention of many researchers. Some of those properties are poorly understood even today. For instance, formation of a liquid-like layer on the ice surface is mostly unexplained. Other properties like electrical and optical are better studied, though leaving many unsolved questions. In part slow progress is explained by experimental difficulties one encounters trying to work with ice. High vapor pressure, low atomic weight, hydrogen bonding, liquid-like layer and protonic electric conductivity make it very difficult and sometimes impossible effectively apply modern techniques and methods used to study other solids. From the standpoint of the electronic conduction theory, ice, with its wide band gap, E(gap)= 10.9 eV, must be an insulator. However, it exhibits significant electric conductivity ( ~10-7 (Ohm cm)-1 at T = - 10¡C), which is protonic by nature. The electric conductivity is explained by the motion of so called defects of protonic subsystem: ions and Bjerrum defects. In total there are four different charge carriers. Practically all properties of ice including mechanical strongly depend on the state of protonic subsystem, concentration of charge carriers and their mutual proportions. The talk will describe the protonic photoconductivity of ice, the photo-plastic effect in ice, and methods used to investigate the nature of photo charge carriers.

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A time -dependent theoretical model of surface wave induced magnetic reconnection ( SWIMR ) based on the mathematical analysis of resonant absorption of Alfven waves near a neutral point is briefly reviewed. Keeping in view recent critical rewiews of vortex- induced magnetic reonnection (VIMR ) it is argued that SWIMR may be a more plausible mechanism to explain the FTEs at the magnetopause. It is further suggested that SWIMR may be responsible for the recently observed plasmoid ejectons from the microflares in the solar corona.

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A linear gyrokinetic system for low frequency electromagnetic modes is developed. A wide range of modes in inhomogeneous plasmas, such as the kink modes, the compressional and shear Alfv\'en modes, and the drift modes, can be recovered from this system. The inclusion of most of the interesting physical factors into a single framework enables us to look at many familiar modes simultaneously and thus to study the modifications of and the interactions between them in a systematic way. Especially, we are able to investigate selfconsistently the kinetic magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) phenomena entirely from the kinetic side. Phase space Lagrangian Lie perturbation methods and a newly developed computer algebra package for vector analysis in general coordinate system are utilized in the analytical derivation. A two dimensional finite element code has been developed and tested.

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I will briefly review the physics of the saturation of kinetic instabilities due to wave trapping, and the role of collisions in wave-particle resonant interaction. I will provide a general introduction to the delta-f method, then discuss some of the difficulties in extending delta-f method to cases with collisions, and show how the introduction of a convenient tool (the marker distribution in extended phase space) overcomes such difficulties. I will then try to apply the new method to the simulation of a recent TFTR experiment and discuss the result.

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