Plasma in Our Lives
MiPlasma #40Dr. Mark Herrmann, Creating, Diagnosing, and Controlling High Energy Density Matter with the National Ignition Facility
What is plasma? Where do we find it? What can we do with it? How does plasma beneficially affect our lives?
In this series of videos, available on YouTube, these and other questions about plasmas will be answered. The videos originated from interviews of leading plasma scientists and engineers from around the world who presented MIPSE seminars at the University of Michigan. They speak about their own internationally leading plasma research, new technologies that will shape our future that use plasmas and how plasmas are important to all of us every day. The videos were produced by the Michigan Institute for Plasma Science and Engineering, with sponsorship by the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy Office of Fusion Energy Science.
A captioned version of each video is available on YouTube.
We welcome viewers to download our videos for education, outreach and informational purposes. When using our videos, please acknowledge the Michigan Institute for Plasma Science and Engineering, the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy Office of Fusion Energy Sciences.
Acknowledgments
Videos by Research Area:
- The Fundamentals of Plasma
- Plasmas, Microwaves, and Electromagnetics
- Plasma Propulsion
- Plasmas in the Solar System and Space
- Fusion, High Energy Density, and Astrophysics
- Lasers, Plasmas, Acceleration
- Plasmas for Materials, Microelectronics, Environment, and Biotechnology
All MiPlasma Videos:
- Mark Kushner, The Wonders of Plasmas (December 18, 2013)
- Sergey Lebedev, The Z-Pinch and Making Miniature Astrophysical Jets in the Laboratory (September 18, 2013)
- Edward Thomas, Dusty Plasmas and the MDPX Facility (September 25, 2013)
- Vitaly Yakimenko, Plasma Based Particle Accelerators and FACET (September 19, 2013)
- Michael Brown, Solar Wind Turbulence and the SSX Plasma Wind Tunnel (October 9, 2013)
- Hui Chen, High Power Lasers Making Electron Positron Jets (October 23, 2013)
- Michael Keidar, Plasma Medicine Using Cold Plasmas to Kill Cancer Cells (October 15, 2014)
- Peter Ventzek, Plasma Processing for Microelectronics Fabrication (November 22, 2013)
- Richard Temkin, High Powered Microwaves and Nuclear Fusion Energy (January 22, 2014)
- Thomas Corke, Plasma Lenses for Aircraft Communications (December 11, 2013)
- Yuri Sphrits, Space Weather and Radiation Belts (March 12, 2014)
- Cameron Geddes, Compact Particle Accelerators (February 26, 2014)
- Sarah Stewart, Planetary Collisions (January 14, 2015)
- Amy Wendt, Using Light to Diagnose a Cool Plasma (December 10, 2014)
- Donald Schiffler, Electric Field Emission of Electrons (January 28, 2015)
- Andrew Christlieb, Computational Plasma Physics (October 15, 2014)
- Ronnie Shepherd, Creating Implosions to Mimic Stellar Interiors (March 11, 2015)
- Patric Muggli, Surfing Plasma Waves (March 18, 2015)
- Edmund Synakowski, Plasma Fusion: Clean Energy for the Future (October 7, 2015)
- Dan Goebel, Electric Propulsion and Asteroid Capture (February 11, 2015)
- Brad King, Turning Liquid Magnets into Miniature Plasma Thrusters (December 9, 2015)
- Steve Cowley, Fusion Energy, ITER, and Studying Physics (January 13, 2016)
- Sergey Macheret, Microplasmas for Reconfigurable Radio-Frequency Electronics (September 30, 2015)
- Ellen Zweibel, Extreme Astrophysics: The Science of Cosmic Rays (February 10, 2016)
- Alexander Schekochihin, Magnetic Fields and Plasma Turbulence (March 23, 2016)
- Michael Kong, Gas Plasmas in Medicine (December 9, 2015)
- James Drake, Electron and Ion Heating, Acceleration and Energy Partition During Magnetic Reconnection (September 21, 2016)
- Vandana Miller, Plasma Medicine (December 2, 2016)
- Luís Silva, In Silico Plasmas under Extreme Conditions: from Particle Accelerators to Pair Plasmas in Pulsars (October 5, 2016)
- André Anders, Plasmas, Metals, Sputtering, and Materials (December 7, 2016)
- Matthew Gomez, Pulsed Power for Plasma Fusion (March 8, 2017)
- Gianluca Gregori, Magnetic Fields and Fusion (March 22, 2017)
- Troy Carter, Fundamental Processes in Plasma Physics (October 19, 2016)
- David Meyerhofer, High Energy Density Physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory (November 30, 2016)
- Martin Gundersen, Plasma and Pulsed Power (September 20, 2017)
- Benjamin Jorns, Electric Propulsion and Plasma (April 12, 2017)
- Vyacheslav (Slava) Lukin, Plasma Physics at the National Science Foundation (September 19, 2016)
- Philipp Grete, Plasmas, Magnetic Fields, Turbulence (November 15, 2017)
- J. Tiberius Moran-Lopez, Plasma Sciences and Stockpile Stewardship (October 18, 2017)
- Mark Herrmann, Creating, Diagnosing, and Controlling High Energy Density Matter with the National Ignition Facility (November 29, 2017)
- Gregory Rochau, From Stars to the Laboratory: Plasmas, Fusion, Energy and Security (September 27, 2017)
- John Brophy, Ion Propulsion and the Job Creating Power of the Rocket Equation (January 17, 2018)
- Mark Cappelli, Plasma Control of Electromagnetic Waves (March 28, 2018)
- Selma Mededovic Thagard, Plasmas for Water Purification (April 4, 2018)
- Ricky L. K. Ang, Electron Emission from Two-Dimensional Novel Materials and Applications (April 11, 2018)
- Brad Hoff, Electron Beam Source Studies at AFRL (January 17, 2018)
- John Cary, Use of Computation for Understanding Plasmas (September 26, 2018)
- Richard Wirz, Plasma Rockets Using Advanced Materials (October 10, 2018)
- Jeffrey Oishi, Simulating Stellar Flows (October 31, 2018)
- Svetlana Starikovskaia, Making Plasmas in Nanoseconds (January 17, 2018)
- John Kline, Deconstructing Integrated High Energy Density Physics Experiments into Fundamental Models for Validation (December 5, 2018)
- Simon Bland, High Energy Density Physics: Mega-amps and Megabars (March 20, 2019)
- Andréa Schmidt, Taking a Neutron Picture in a Flash (September 18, 2019)
- Wensheng Huang, Plasma Diagnostics Package for Studying High-Power Hall Thrusters in Flight (October 2, 2019)
- Evdokiya (Eva) Kostadinova, The Wonderland of Dusty Plasma (November 22, 2019)
- Philip Bucksbaum, Plasmas That Exist Inside the Vacuum (December 4, 2019)
- Bruce Locke, Plasmas Contacting Liquid and Building Plasma Reactors (October 16, 2019)
- Ute Ebert, Electric Breakdown in Thunderstorms (February 27, 2019)
- Joachim Birn, Storms in the Magnetosphere: Disruption of Currents, Plasma Jets, and Particle Energization (November 13, 2019)
- Frank Graziani, From Electrons to Galactic Jets: Quantum Hydrodynamics and High Energy Density Plasmas (November 4, 2020)
- James Polk, Modeling Ion Engine Erosion (January 15, 2020)
- Jorge Rocca, The Brightest Lights: Lasers and Plasmas (September 30, 2020)
- Derek Schaeffer, Bringing Cosmic Shock Waves Down to Earth (October 21, 2020)
- Sarah Nelson, Nuclear Stockpile Stewardship and the Creation of New Elements (November 18, 2020)
- Nicola Fox, Journey to the Sun (January 27, 2021)
- Troy Carter, Powering the Future: Fusion, Plasmas, and the FESAC Long Range Planning Report (February 10, 2021)
- Scott Baalrud, Physics of Strongly Coupled Plasmas (February 26, 2021)
- Sedina Tsikata, Shining a Light on the Complex Physics of Low-temperature Plasmas (March 10, 2021)
- Tammy Ma, Accelerating the Rate of Discovery in HED Physics (October 20, 2021)
- Louis DiMauro, Extreme Laser-Matter Interaction Across the Electromagnetic Spectrum (October 13, 2021)
- Richard Gottscho, Using Plasmas to Make Computer Chips (March 24, 2021)
- Justin Little, Predicting Abrupt Mode Transitions in Aerospace Plasmas (March 31, 2021)
- Davide Curreli, Plasma - Liquid Surface Interactions (November 17, 2021)
- Ken Hara, Computational Models for Electric Propulsion and Low-temperature Plasma Applications (December 8, 2021)
- Katharina Stapelmann, Plasma - The New All-purpose Tool for Medicine (January 26, 2022)
- Andrei Smolyakov, Physics of Partially Magnetized E x B Plasmas in the Laboratory and Space (April 14, 2021)
- Joseph Huba, Ionosphere Plasma Turbulence and Its Impact on Space Systems (March 23, 2022)
- Farhat Beg, Z-Pinches and Thermonuclear Fusion (March 9, 2022)
- James Gilland, Physics Impacts to Plasma Wave Thruster Design (November 3, 2021)
- Michael McDonald, Opening the Way to Space with Electric Propulsion (October 26, 2022)
- Joel Fajans, Fundamental Tests with Antihydrogen Atoms (February 16, 2022)
- Omar Hurricane, Inertial Confinement Fusion (March 8, 2023)
- Radha Bahukutumbi, Clean Energy Solutions and Planet Core Studies from Inertial Confinement Fusion (November 16, 2022)
- Dmitri Uzdensky, Extreme Astrophysical Plasmas & Magnetic Reconnection (October 12, 2022)
- Kurt Polzin, Nuclear Power Applications for Spacecraft Propulsion (November 30, 2022)
- Andrew Christlieb, Using Machine Learning to Solve First Principle Models in Plasma Physics (March 22, 2023)
- Ali Sulaiman, The Giant Planets as Unique Laboratories for Space Plasma Processes (September 14, 2023)
- Elaine Petro, Multiscale Modeling of Molecular Ion Beams and Beam-Surface Interactions (September 27, 2023)
- Arianna Gleason, New Lens on the Frontier of Matter in Extreme Conditions (April 19, 2023)
- Trevor Lafleur, Plasmas for Propulsion: Alternative Propellants and (Some) Emerging Concepts (October 4, 2023)
- David Graves, Plasma Enables Nanofabrication (October 25, 2023)
Acknowledgments
The MiPlasma project was conceived and executed by Prof. Alexander Thomas. Interviews were conducted by Prof. Thomas and MIPSE Fellows. Video capture and production is by Michael Hensel of InMotion Studios, with technical advice and support from Catharine June, Zachary Champion, Dan Newman, and Hayley Hanway and graphic design by Rose Anderson.
The project is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy Office of Fusion Energy Science.