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Dr Daniel Verscharen
Holmbury St Mary
Dorking
Surrey
RH5 6NT
Appointment
- Senior Research Fellow
- Dept of Space & Climate Physics
- Faculty of Maths & Physical Sciences
Research Groups
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See LessResearch Summary
In my research, I investigate the plasma physics of the solar wind and the solar corona. The solar wind is a tenuous magnetised plasma. A plasma is a gas in which the ions and electrons are separated from each other and do not form neutral atoms like in a regular gas. The moving charged plasma particles modify and react to electric and magnetic fields. This leads to a behaviour that is very different from the behaviour of neutral gases like the air.
Under certain conditions, a plasma can be described like a fluid (for example with the equations of magnetohydrodynamics), but often a description based on kinetic physics is necessary. I work on the kinetic aspects of the plasma behaviour in the solar wind. I am especially interested in wave-particle interactions, kinetic waves and instabilities, turbulence, plasma heating, and shock waves.
One of my current major projects is the development of ALPS, which stands for Arbitrary Linear Plasma Solver. ALPS is a numerical solver for the full hot-plasma dispersion relation in a plasma with arbitrary background distribution functions. The numerical code determines the behaviour of kinetic plasma waves including relativistic effects. More details can be found on http://www.alps.space.
Appointments
| 02-JAN-2019 | Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer in space plasma physics | Mullard Space Science Laboratory | University College London, United Kingdom |
| 07-SEP-2017 | Affiliate Assistant Professor | Space Science Center | University of New Hampshire, United States |
| 01-SEP-2017 | Ernest Rutherford Fellow | Mullard Space Science Laboratory | University College London, United Kingdom |
| 27-FEB-2017 – 21-JUL-2017 | Research Assistant Professor | Space Science Center and Department of Physics | University of New Hampshire, United States |
| 12-JUL-2009 – 26-FEB-2017 | Research Scientist | Space Science Center | University of New Hampshire, United States |
| 01-DEC-2007 – 31-JAN-2009 | Research Assistant | Argelander Institute for Astronomy | University of Bonn, Germany |
Academic Background
| 2012 | Dr.rer.nat. | Doctor rerum naturalium – Natural Sciences | Technische Universitat Carolo Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig |
| 2007 | Dipl. | Diplom – Physics | Rheinische Friedrich- Wilhelms- Universitat Bonn |
