Center for Magnetic Self-Organization in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas

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The goal of the Center for Magnetic Self-Organization in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas (CMSO), initiated in September, 2003, is to unite laboratory and astrophysical plasma scientists to advance critical plasma physics topics common to both fields. The sense of the CMSO research mission is captured by two large questions: Why is the universe magnetized? How do magnetic fields affect the structure of plasmas? CMSO encompasses and is organized around four, coupled processes: magnetic reconnection, dynamo effects, momentum transport, and magnetic turbulence. The heart of the effort is focused on answering fundamental questions in each area through experiment, computation, and theory, and applying the understanding to important astrophysical problems. These physics problems are addressed by a team of scientists from seven institutions that collectively provide unique tools (seven experiments and an arsenal of computational resources) and great breadth of expertise from the lab to astrophysics, and from experiment to theory to computation. The member institutions are the University of Wisconsin, Princeton University and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, the University of New Hampshire, Swarthmore College, and Science Applications International Corporation. Participating experiments include three toroidal plasma experiments that exhibit many features of self-organization: the MST reversed field pinch (Wisconsin) and two merging plasma experiments, MRX (Princeton) and SSX (Swarthmore); two linear experiments for line-tied reconnection: RSX (Los Alamos), RWX (Wisconsin); and two liquid metal experiments: the MRI experiment (Princeton) for studying the magnetorotational instability, and the Madison Dynamo Experiment. National laboratory participation (Los Alamos, Princeton) will be supported by DOE, as is the experimental infrastructure; thus, CMSO is very much a partnership between NSF and DOE. The educational outreach program is based on The Wonders of Physics lecture-demonstration program through the University of Wisconsin. Under the auspices of this program CMSO representatives make over 100 presentations per year reaching an audience of school children and the general public of 10,000 persons per year. In the past year, presentations were made to 2000 African American children through specially targeted presentations and extensively to Native Americans and rural communities.