Plasma theory

Welcome to the website of the plasma theory research group at Chalmers University of Technology. We belong to the Division of Subatomic, High Energy and Plasma Physics of the Department of Physics.

Workshops

Throwing snowballs on home-made stars on November 27th 2025

News

Postdoc openings September 6th

We are looking for two postdocs to join our Plasma Theory team, one in [fusion plasma physics]( https://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/work-with-us/vacancies/?rmpage=job&rmjob=14180&rmlang=UK) and one in [laser plasma physics]( https://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/work-with-us/vacancies/?rmpage=job&rmjob=14158&rmlang=UK).

Third XFLARE general assembly 28-29 Aug August 29th

The [Extreme Plasma Flares](https://kaw.wallenberg.org/en/research/data-space-probes-aiding-our-understanding-plasma-flares) project participants gathered at KTH to discuss electron acceleration due to magnetic reconnection in the Earth's magnetosphere. Tünde gave an overview of Chalmers activities in the area, Konrad presented "Beam and flattop distributions in collisionless reconnection", Istvan presented "Collisionless fluid modeling of instabilities and strategies to improve closures" and Ida talked about "Following up on the magnetosheath whistler waves".

PhD defense August 17th

Oskar Vallhagen is planning to defend his PhD thesis "Disruption mitigation in tokamaks with massive material injection" on Friday 28 November. The faculty opponent will be Sandor Zoletnik from HUN-REN Centre for Energy Research, Budapest. The members of the evaluation committee will be Boris Breizman, University of Texas at Austin, Akinobu Matsuyama from Kyoto University and Ramon Martin-Solis from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. In connection with this we will have a workshop with the title: "Throwing snowballs on home-made stars" on Thursday 27 November.

12th Runaway Electron Modelling (REM) meeting 2-6 June June 9th

Ida, Oskar, Björn and Tünde participated in the 12th REM meeting at EPFL in Lausanne, with a record of 89 participants from 33 institutes around the world. The REM meeting series was started at Chalmers 2013 and is organized yearly since then (except for 2021). Next year it will be organized by Mathias Hoppe at KTH, Stockholm.

Upcoming events

Ida Ekmark will go to Washington DC, USA between August 31st — November 16th. She will work with Matt Landreman at the University of Maryland.

Per Helander from Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Greifswald will visit between September 7th — 14th.

Tünde Fülöp will go to Stockholm between September 9th — 11th. She will participate in meetings at KVA.

István Pusztai will go to Cadarache between September 10th — 12th. He is part of the evaluation committee at Nathan Schoonheere's PhD defense.

Ida Svenningsson will go to International Space Science Institute, Bern between September 15th — 19th. She will participate in a joint meting for two ISSI teams: [Evolution of Turbulence in the Expanding Solar Wind](https://teams.issibern.ch/turbulencesolarwind/) and [Unveiling Energy Conversion and Dissipation in Non-Equilibrium Space Plasmas](https://teams.issibern.ch/nonequilibriumspaceslasmas/).

Tünde Fülöp will go to Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Greifswald between September 16th — 19th. She will participate in a meeting with the IPP Fachbeirat.

Dominika Maslarova and István Pusztai will go to AAPPS-DPP2025 conference (Fukuoka International Congress Center, Japan). between September 21st — 26th. Dominika has been invited to give a talk on "Batch Bayesian optimization of attosecond betatron pulses from laser wakefield acceleration". Istvan has been invited to give a talk with the title "From Weibel seed generation to saturated dynamo in collisionless plasmas with finite mass ratio". In addition, Tünde is co-author on a contribution "Towards scalable large-scale model validation with data science" by A Järvinen from VTT, Finland.

Björn Zaar and Oskar Vallhagen will go to Aix-en-Provence between September 23rd — 26th. They will participate in the [European Fusion Theory Conference](https://indico.global/event/13788/). Oskar will give an invited talk on "Semi-analytical model for the pellet rocket effect in magnetic confinement fusion plasmas". Björn will present "Criterion for significant runaway electron generation in activated devices".

Tünde Fülöp will go to Stockholm on September 24th. She will participate in a meeting at KVA.

Tünde Fülöp will go to Budapest between October 23rd — 30th. She will participate in a meeting with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and give a seminar with the title "Faster than lightning".

Tünde Fülöp will go to Amsterdam between November 10th — 12th. She will participate in a visit of Dutch research institutes together with the physics class of KVA.

Contact details

Address
Department of Physics
Chalmers University of Technology
SE-412 96 Göteborg
Sweden

Email: tunde at chalmers.se

Find us: The group's offices are on the top (3rd) floor of the Soliden part of the Physics building. The address is Fysikgården 1. This map shows various routes to find the place.