Cassak
Title
Prof.
Date of Birth
Nationality
USA
Institution
West Virginia University
Address
Department of Physics and Astronomy
White Hall Box 6315 West Virginia University
Morgantown, WV 26506
United States
Telephone
Email
Paul.Cassak@mail.wvu.edu
Speciality
Theoretical and Computational Plasma Physics
Website
https://paulcassak.wixsite.com/paulcassak/
Collaborator role
Prof. P. Cassak is part of this project as a Collaborator. P. Cassak has been a faculty member at West Virginia University (WVU, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA) since 2008 and he is currently the Associate Director of the WVU Center for KINETIC Plasma Physics. He is an internationally renowned expert in theoretical and computational plasma physics, and a specialist in space physics with strong expertise in magnetic reconnection, focusing especially on kinetic processes. He has authored 131 peer-reviewed publications, including papers in high-impact factor journals such as Science, Nature, and Phys. Rev. Lett., with an h-index of 43 and over 5.600 citations. In the last few years, P. Cassak and his group have been exploring the topic of energy conversion in collisionless and out-of-local thermodynamic equilibrium (or non-LTE) plasmas. This effort led to publications investigating and advancing the Pi-D approach and, importantly, to the theoretical framework reported in Cassak., P. , et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 085201 (2023)
P. Cassak's involvement ensures a strong theoretical and computational foundation for the project and his role in this project is aligned with his main areas of expertise. In particular, he will provide simulation data for WP2. The simulation run presented in Barbhuiya, H. M., & Cassak, P., Phys. Plasmas 29, 122308 (2022) represents a possible run that I will use for my project. It consists of a 2D-3V (two-dimensional in ordinary space and three-dimensional in velocity space) fully kinetic Particle-In-Cell (PIC) reconnection simulation. This simulation will be particularly useful in comparing with electron observations in the Electron Diffusion Region (EDR), which is the key region where both ions and electrons are demagnetized, reconnection is enabled and energy is converted from the field to kinetic and thermal energy of the plasma species.
Considering the time constraints of the one-year Integration Fellowship, leveraging existing simulation runs offers a pragmatic approach to ensure project feasibility. Nonetheless, there is the potential for conducting new simulations tailored to specific observed reconnection events.
Furthermore, P. Cassak will provide support in interpreting the results of the in situ data analysis that applied the VDF-based theoretical framework developed by his group.
P. Cassak's involvement ensures a strong theoretical and computational foundation for the project and his role in this project is aligned with his main areas of expertise. In particular, he will provide simulation data for WP2. The simulation run presented in Barbhuiya, H. M., & Cassak, P., Phys. Plasmas 29, 122308 (2022) represents a possible run that I will use for my project. It consists of a 2D-3V (two-dimensional in ordinary space and three-dimensional in velocity space) fully kinetic Particle-In-Cell (PIC) reconnection simulation. This simulation will be particularly useful in comparing with electron observations in the Electron Diffusion Region (EDR), which is the key region where both ions and electrons are demagnetized, reconnection is enabled and energy is converted from the field to kinetic and thermal energy of the plasma species.
Considering the time constraints of the one-year Integration Fellowship, leveraging existing simulation runs offers a pragmatic approach to ensure project feasibility. Nonetheless, there is the potential for conducting new simulations tailored to specific observed reconnection events.
Furthermore, P. Cassak will provide support in interpreting the results of the in situ data analysis that applied the VDF-based theoretical framework developed by his group.