The 2020 Council meeting of the European Physical Society [EPS] took place on 29 May 2020. The EPS Secretariat organised the meeting on-line, allowing more than 70 people to participate in the meeting. The EPS President, Petra Rudolf, summarised the activity of the EPS and its Committees, Divisions and Groups. The accounts for 2019 were presented by the EPS Honorary Treasurer, Frances Saunders.

The two candidates for President-Elect, Luc Bergé (FR) and Zsolt Fülöp (HU), also presented their programmes to the EPS Council delegates. The EPS is pleased to announce that Luc Bergé has been elected as the next EPS President-elect. He will take up office as the President of EPS in April 2021, when the term of the current President, Petra Rudolf, comes to an end. The EPS warmly thanked Zsolt Fülöp, for standing as a candidate.

Luc Bergé graduated in mathematics and physics from the Universities of Toulouse and Paris-Sud, Orsay, France. In 1989, he received his PhD in theoretical physics, devoted to the strong Langmuir turbulence in laser-driven fusion plasmas. In 1990, he was employed as research scientist at CEA (French Commission for Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies). Working first on parametric instabilities in plasmas, he then turned to nonlinear optics in 1995. In 1997, he passed his Habilitation thesis on wave collapse in physics. He next devoted his research to the filamentation of ultrashort laser pulses in transparent media and related properties such as supercontinuum generation and pulse self-compression, which he pioneered in the early 2000. More recently, Luc Bergé focused his scientific activities on terahertz pulse generation induced by femtosecond pulses in gases. With his team he is exploring new ways to produce energetic THz waves by using ultra-intense laser pulses. Also involved in experimental efforts on innovative detection methods, Luc Bergé coordinates the French ANR project ALTESSE, which is devoted to ultrabroadband terahertz spectroscopy of molecules.

Luc Bergé’s research activities have been expressed in about 150 articles, six book chapters and 170 conferences (100 invited). He was elected Fellow of The Optical Society (OSA) in 2009, EPS Fellow in 2016, Fellow of the European Optical Society (EOS) in 2018 and Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2019. He received the DGA-Young Researcher Prize in 1997, the second Bull-Fourier Prize in 2012 and the 2018 Gentner Kastler Prize jointly attributed by the German and French Physical Societies. He is Director of Research at CEA Direction Ile de France, where he is heading a laboratory dedicated to radiation-matter interaction. Luc Bergé served as Chair of the Quantum Electronics and Optics Division of the EPS until 2017. He was General coordinating Chair of the conference CLEO/Europe-EQEC 2015. Elected a member of the Executive Committee of the EPS, he was in charge of its Associate Membership policy and of the Equal Opportunities Committee. He co-created the Letokhov Medal awarding exceptional achievements in laser-matter interaction in partnership between the EPS and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Luc Bergé

The European Physical Society Accelerator Group (EPS-AG) has announced the winners of the 2020 Accelerator Prizes. The prizes were presented on 14 May in the context of the International Particle Accelerator Conference. It had been planned to hold IPAC’20 in Caen, France. Due to the restrictions resulting from the Covid-19 epidemic, the conference was not held as a presential meeting, but the oral program including a live presentation of the award session was made available under https://www.ipac20.org/.

Prof. Lucio Rossi of CERN, receives the Rolf Wideröe Prize for outstanding work in the accelerator field. He is rewarded for his pioneering role in the development of superconducting magnet technology for accelerators and experiments, its application to complex projects in High Energy Physics including strongly driving industrial capability, and for his tireless effort in promoting the field of accelerator science and technology.

The Gersch Budker Prize, for a recent significant, original contribution to the accelerator field, is awarded to Dr. Hideaki Hotchi, J-PARC. He receives the prize for his achievements in the commissioning of the J-PARC Rapid Cycling Synchrotron, with sustained 1 MW operation at unprecedented low levels of beam loss made possible by his exceptional understanding of complex beam dynamics processes, thereby laying the foundations for future high power proton synchrotrons worldwide.

The Frank Sacherer Prize, for an individual in the early part of his or her career goes to to Dr. Johannes Steinmann, ANL, for his significant contribution to the development and demonstration of ultra-fast accelerator instrumentation using THz technology, having the potential for major impact on the field of electron bunch-by-bunch diagnostics.

For further information, visit: https://www.eps.org/members/group_content_view.asp?group=85227&id=143442 .

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The EPS Plasma Physics Division is happy to announce the winners of the EPS PPD PhD Research Award. The Selection Committee had following members : Fabien Dorchies, Francois Ryter and Jack Connor.

The Selection Committee proposed 4 candidates for the award:

• Archie Bott
• Bart Ripperda
• Kevin Verhaegh
• Rogério Jorge

Candidates and citations

Candidate: Archie Bott

Nominator: Alex Schekochihin

Title of PhD thesis: Magnetic-field amplification in turbulent laser-plasmas

Univ./Inst: University of Oxford 

Citation: This work combines theoretical simulations and experimental contributions in laser-generated-jet collision, in order to simulate in a laboratory what happens in various astrophysical contexts. In only the first year of his PhD, Archie Bott produced and published a complete theory of magnetic-field reconstruction from protons radiographic images and a full set of numerical codes needed to apply it. This “preparatory” work was used to significantly enrich this diagnostic tool that provided new information from experiments that he led on the most high-energy lasers in the word.

These original studies and impressive work focused on time-resolved turbulent dynamo process. At the end of his PhD, Archie Bott returned to more theoretical and fundamental work, giving rise to another innovative publication of great depth in physics, which is essentially a comprehensive treatise on plasma instabilities at high beta.

Candidate: Bart Ripperda

Nominator: Rony Keppens

Title of PhD thesis: On magnetic reconnection and particle acceleration in relativistic plasmas

Univ./Inst: KU Leuven University

Citation: This is a theoretical and simulation work that concerns the astrophysics, and more precisely the environment of black holes and neutron stars. In his PhD work, Bart Ripperta combines very strong knowledge and understanding of plasma physics and general gravity, which allows him to tackle problems that are well beyond the scope of traditional plasma physics and astrophysics. He built a variety of word-class numerical tools for plasma physics in strong gravitational fields, including general relativistic & resistive magneto-hydrodynamic, and a set of algorithms for pushing charged particles in electromagnetic fields around black holes.

This remarkable work on photon and particle paths in full general relativity is of highest quality, and has already received broad recognition in the international plasma astrophysics community. It directly benefits the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration for which he has been actively working for a year.

Candidate: Kevin Verhaegh

Nominator: Bruce Lipschultz

Title of PhD thesis: Spectroscopic investigations of detachment on TCV: Investigating the role of atomic physics on the ion current rollover and the dynamics of detachment in TCV

Univ./Inst: University of York

Citation: This thesis presents new results on the physics of detachment in a tokamak divertor, a complex topic because it involves not only plasma physics but also atomic phenomena. This is extensively discussed in Kevin Verhaegh's thesis, showing clearly that he understands very well this physics.

Kevin Verhaegh developed excellent divertor measurements and a novel method to analyse the data taking into account both the recombination and excitation contributions to the Balmer lines. He shows convincingly that the ion flux is not only due to recombination, as assumed during the last two decades, but that, in addition, the ionisation of the neutrals is an important contribution. Furthermore, he demonstrates that the latter is limited by a loss of power into the divertor recycling region when density increases, contributing significantly to the saturation. He validated these important results with modelling using the edge and divertor code SOLPS-ITER, showing that the modelling results match the experimental observations much better than in the past.

This new view contributes significantly to fusion research as divertor detachment will be required in future devices to reduce the power load. With this new knowledge modelling and extrapolation of divertor detachment are more reliable.

Candidate: Rogério Jorge

Nominator: Paolo Ricci

Title of PhD thesis: A moment-based model for plasma dynamics of arbitrary collisionality

Univ./Inst: EPFL, University of Lisbon

Citation: This thesis tackles a long-standing problem, namely, how to develop a set of equations that can uniformly describe plasma behaviour in situations where the collisionality ranges from essentially collision-less to highly collisional, a situation that pertains in the edge region of a tokamak in particular. This region is crucial to a tokamak’s performance and the viability of fusion as an energy source, controlling overall confinement and exhaust; an ability to model the region is essential for the development of fusion power. This thesis develops a set of fluid-like moment equations suitable for this purpose. The derivation is based on a Sonine-Laguerre expansion of the drift-kinetic plasma equations and treats the full non-linear Coulomb collision operator, an analytic tour-de- force. The model is appropriate for describing the scrape-off-region, which contains open magnetic field lines and lies between the confined plasma region and the containment vessel; furthermore, it can describe the large fluctuations that are present there.  A similar procedure is also applied in the thesis to the full-F gyro-kinetic model, which is suitable for modelling the adjacent confinement region of a tokamak. In addition, efficient numerical algorithms for computing solutions to these equations are formulated. Finally, the methodology is applied in practice to study the impact of collisions on plasma oscillations and drift waves, using different common simplified collision models; the results show surprising sensitivities.  The model is now ready for application to the tokamak edge problem. This work, performed independently and with considerable initiative, constitutes a seminal contribution to magnetic confinement fusion, and plasma theory in general, demonstrating novelty and originality and exhibits both analytic and numerical skills.