Professor Amitava Bhattacharjee is a Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University and at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He also serves as Co-Director of the Princeton Center for Heliophysics, supporting a NASA-National Science Foundation (NSF) collaboration on Space Weather as well as Director of the Simons Foundation collaboration on Hidden Symmetries in Stellarators.

He received his Ph.D. at Princeton University in theoretical plasma physics. He has taught previously at Columbia University (1984-93) in the Department of Applied Physics, at the University of Iowa (1993-2003) in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the University of New Hampshire (2003-12), where he served as Paul Professor of Space Science. He has served as Senior Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics, as Chair of the Division of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society, and as Founding Chair of the Topical Group in Plasma Astrophysics of the American Physical Society. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association of the Advancement of Science, and the American Geophysical Union.

His present research interests include: magnetic reconnection and current singularity formation, turbulence, and the dynamo effect in laboratory, space, and astrophysical plasmas.

He received his Ph.D. at Princeton University (1981) in theoretical plasma physics from the Department of Astrophysical Sciences. He has taught previously at Columbia University (1984-93) in the Department of Applied Physics, at the University of Iowa (1993-2003) in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the University of New Hampshire (2003-12), where he served as Paul Professor of Space Science. At the University of Iowa, he received the James Van Allen Natural Sciences Fellowship (1996), the Faculty Scholar Award (1997-2000), and the Michael J. Brody Award (2003). He has served as Senior Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics, as Chair of the Division of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society, and as Founding Chair of the Topical Group in Plasma Astrophysics of the American Physical Society, and on various prize and fellowship committees. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association of the Advancement of Science, and the American Geophysical Union.

His research interests include: magnetic reconnection, turbulence and singularity formation, kinetic theory, free-electron lasers, and complex (or dusty) plasmas. He and his students and postdoctoral colleagues have authored about 250 papers with broad applications to laboratory (including fusion), space and astrophysical plasmas.

phone: 609-243-3100
email: [email protected]

ADDITIONAL

• Princeton Faculty: A. Bhattacharjee
• Simons Foundation Hidden Symmetries Collaboration
• Princeton Center for Heliophysics

PAPERS

• "Fast reconnection in high-Lundquist-number plasmas due to the plasmoid instability"
  A. Bhattacharjee, Y.-M. Huang et al., Phys. Plasmas 16, 112102 (2009)
• "Generation of large-scale magnetic fields by small-scale dynamo in shear flows"
  J. Squire & A. Bhattacharjee, Phys. Rev. Lett 115, 175003 (2015)
• "Adjoint Fokker-Planck equation and runaway electron dynamics"
  C. Liu, D. Brennan et al., Phys. Plasmas 23, 010702 (2016)