Masterclasses
The masterclasses were given by Sibylle Günter, Anette (Peko) Hosoi, Anne Green and Costas Soukoulis.
On the Monday evening prior to Physics@FOM Veldhoven the programme committee organises four FOM Masterclasses. These offer PhD-students a unique opportunity to receive a in depth class from top researchers. Only 25 places are available for each masterclass.
The four masterclass speakers of Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2013 are listed below.
Masterclass 1
Sibylle Günter
Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Germany
Title of masterclass: Physics basis of magnetic fusion reactors
Nuclear fusion could play a major role in the energy mix during the second half of this century. The advantages of nuclear fusion, in particular for base load power stations, are obvious: the fuel is nearly unlimited and widely available, and - in contrast to fission - there is no possibility of a runaway reaction or meltdown. After more than 50 years of research, fusion has advanced to the decisive step on the way to a power plant: the international tokamak experiment ITER is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of net energy production from nuclear fusion reactions.
For a fusion reactor, matter has to be heated up to extremely high temperatures: more than 100 million degrees - about a factor of 10 hotter than the sun's core. At these temperatures the material is fully ionized. The charged particles can be confined by magnetic fields, which are also able to provide the required efficient heat insulation. For magnetic fusion reactions to be self-sustaining, the thermal insulation has to be a factor of 100 better than that of polystyrene - at temperatures, where the velocity of particles approaches one fifth of the velocity of light!
The physics basis of such magnetic confinement will be discussed. The two alternative concepts on the way to a fusion power plant: the tokamak and the stellarator will be introduced and the remaining scientific challenges for magnetic fusion will be discussed.
Masterclass 2
Anette (Peko) Hosoi
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Title of masterclass: Locomotion
The remarkable ability of animals to crawl, swim, fly, walk, and run in all sorts of conditions and terrains is readily evident in the natural world. All of these forms of locomotion, as well as all others, in nature are primarily composed of gaits i.e., cyclic shape changes in an animal's joints that transport the organism through the environment. Despite recent successes of locomoting robots, such as Boston Dynamics' Petman and Bigdog, animal mobility outpaces artificial locomoters. This discrepancy arises because most artificial locomotion demonstrations are based on empirically-derived controllers that allow a system to work in a specific, well-defined environment. The contrasting broad efficacy of natural motions, along with the abstraction that they transform shape changes to position changes, suggests that gaits should play an equally important role in artificial locomotion, especially in environments inhospitable to conventional wheeled devices.
In this master class, we will discuss the physics of locomotion. We will analyze simple models of biological systems that use difference modes to traverse a variety of environments, from swimming to crawling to digging. We will extract fundamental physical principles and scaling laws associated with the various locomotion strategies, and finally discuss how these principles may be adopted in engineering design.
Masterclass 3
Anne Green
University of Nottingham, UK
Title of masterclass: Detecting dark matter
Observations indicate that the Universe contains a significant amount of cold dark matter, and particle physics provides us with a well-motivated dark matter candidate in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs).
After a brief overview of the evidence for dark matter and the physics behind WIMPs, the masterclass will focus on detecting WIMPs. WIMPs can be detected directly, via their elastic scattering off nuclei in the lab, or indirectly, via the products of their annihilation. We will discuss the principles, current status and future prospects of both types of experiment.
Masterclass 4
Costas Soukoulis
Iowa State University and Ames Laboratory, USA
Title of masterclass: Photonic metamaterials: review, challenges and opportunities
In the last decade, a new area of photonics research has emerged, that has given the ability to produce materials with entirely novel electromagnetic properties. Known as metamaterials for their ability to take beyond conventional materials. Clearly, the field of metamaterials can develop mould-breaking technologies for a plethora of applications, where control over light (or more generally electromagnetic radiation) is a prominent ingredient—among them telecommunications, solar energy harvesting, biological and THz imaging and sensing, optical isolators and polarizers. In this talk, I give an introduction into this emerging field, review recent progress, and highlight remaining challenges and opportunities.