Yangyang Cai, 2024 TAP Graduate Student Research Prize Awardee
When
Refreshments served in the 3rd Floor Atrium at 3:00 pm
TAP Colloquium
Yangyang Cai, 2024 TAP Research Prize Awardee, Postdoc Fellow at Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Title: Ultra-relativistic Charged Particles in Aristotelian Equilibrium
Abstract: Aristotle believed that force was the cause of motion. Although Newtonian physics later disproved this, in certain extreme cases, when an object's inertia is negligible, its velocity rather than acceleration will be fully determined by the forces acting upon it. Since the 1980s, it has been proposed that ultra-relativistic charged particles, when influenced by radiation reaction, may enter such a state, known as "Aristotelian Electrodynamics (AE)." In this talk, I will present the first rigorous derivation of AE, along with some fundamental concepts, such as the local structure of electromagnetic fields. Finally, I will explore its potential applications in pulsar magnetospheres.
Bio: Yangyang is the 2024 TAP Graduate Student Research Prize Awardee for his paper on “Dynamicsof Ultra-relativistic Charged Particles with Strong Radiation Reaction. II. Aristotelian Equilibrium State.” Yangyang Cai received is Ph.D. in Physics in 2023; his advisor was Dr. Sam Gralla.
I’m currently a postdoc at Tsung-Dao Lee Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. I got my bachelor’s degree at Nankai University in China, studying physics. I got my PhD. degree at the University of Arizona, studying theoretical astrophysics. During my PhD. studies, I mainly focused on extreme electromagnetic fields around black holes such as force-free fields. Recently I’m switching from analytic to numeric simulations. I am mainly interested in simulating plasmas around compact objects like black holes and neutron stars using Particle-In-Cell simulations.