Plasma kinetics in magnetised laser driven plasmas

In my PhD project Plasma Kinetics in Magnetised Laser-Driven Plasmas, supervised by Prof. Nigel Woolsey and Dr. Chris Ridgers, I will be investigating the effect of magnetic fields on high-energy-density plasmas. This is motivated by current research that suggests magnetising the hot spot during inertial confinement fusion may help limit conduction losses, a key hurdle in achieving ignition during inertial confinement fusion. However, while the application of magnetic fields may help limit this effect it also introduces other physical effects (e.g. Nernst) that are not well understood. Performing reduced complexity experiments to investigate these effects will allow us to benchmark kinetic models of magnetised transport, which can be incorporated into magneto-hydrodynamic simulations. This research can be applied to a variety of problems in magnetised high-energy-density physics.