Thomas S. Pedersen
Thomas S. Pedersen
Associate Professor204 S.W. Mudd, Mail Code: 4701
New York, NY 10027
Phone: +1 212 854 6528
Email:
Home Page
Research specialty
Plasma physics, magnetic confinement, fusion enegery, non-neutral plasmas, positron-electron plasmas, plasma turbulence
Education
Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000
Biography
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University in New York City. While at Columbia, I have taught Introduction to Plasma Physics, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics at the undergraduate level and Plasma Diagnostics, Physics of Non-neutral Plasmas, and Plasma Physics I at the graduate level.For the last several years, I have been focusing my attention on my new experiment, the Columbia Non-neutral Torus (CNT). The CNT experiment was built to study non-neutral plasmas confined on magnetic surfaces. CNT is a so-called stellarator, which has a twisted toroidal shape, that is, the shape of a twisted tire-tube (or donut). Click here for the CNT homepage.
I am also currently involved with the HBT-EP experiment, doing experiments on resisitive wall mode feedback stabilization. HBT-EP is a tokamak (a toroidal shape that is not twisted) which is devoted to the study of magnetohydrodynamic instabilities and their feedback stabilization. This is of importance to fusion energy science since it will allow us to increase the pressure of the plasmas confined in tokamaks and therefore will help create a more economical fusion power plant.
I did my Ph.D. thesis research on the Alcator C-Mod project at the PSFC studying edge transport barrier physics using soft x-ray imaging diagnostics.
I did my Master's degree in Applied Physics Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). My Master's thesis concentrated on numerical and theoretical investigations of a two-dimensional model for resistive plasma drift wave turbulence. Look up the reference to my Master's thesis if you want to see some animations of plasma turbulence, and coherent vortical structures.
Select Publications
T. Sunn Pedersen, A. H. Boozer, W. Dorland, J. P. Kremer, R. Schmitt, "Prospects for the creation of positron-electron plasmas in a non-neutral stellarator", J. Physics B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 36, p. 1029 (2003)T. Sunn Pedersen, R. S. Granetz, J.W. Hughes, I. H. Hutchinson, E. S. Marmar, D. Mossessian, J.E. Rice, J. Terry, "Measurements of large poloidal variations of impurity density in the Alcator C-Mod H-mode barrier region", Phys. Plasmas 9, p. 4188 (2002)
T. Sunn Pedersen and Allen H. Boozer, "Confinement of Nonneutral Plasmas on Magnetic Surfaces ", Phys. Rev. Letters 88, p. 205002 (2002)
R. G. Lefrancois and T. Sunn Pedersen, “Large density variation predicted along magnetic axis for cold electron plasmas in the Columbia Non-neutral Torus (CNT)”, Letter in Phys. Plasmas 13, 120702 (2006).
J. P. Kremer, T. Sunn Pedersen, R. G. Lefrancois, Q. Marksteiner, “Experimental confirmation of stable, small-Debye-length, pure electron plasma equilibria in a stellarator”, Phys. Rev. Letters 97 095003 (2006)