Bernard Bigot (Director General of ITER Organization) has opened The 8th Festival de Théorie this morning in Aix en Provence, alongside Yanick Sarazin (IRFM-CEA) President of the Local Organizing Committee & Pat Diamond (UCSD, USA) President of the Scientific Committee. It takes place at the Faculté de Lettres of Aix en Provence (Aix-Marseille Université) from 06 -23 July 2015.

Organized on a biannunal basis since 2001 by CEA-IRFM, the Festival gathers about 80 theoreticians on plasma and nonlinear physics during 3 weeks. A balance between senior and younger researchers is achieved, with contributions from various communities, ranging from Controlled Fusion to Astrophysics, Geophysics and Fluid Mechanics.

This year, the main topic "Pathways to Relaxation" actually hides some hard materials behind its charming title:

Reconnection events such as Solar Flares & general impulsive relaxation in astrophysics, sawteeth, Edge Localized Modes and edge relaxation phenomena in confined plasmas, Taylor relaxation, Potential Vorticity mixing and Homogenization in fluids, and general aspects of constrained relaxations.

The Festival Program is 3 fold:

1) First, the participants present the most recent results in the field & promote new ideas.

2) Secondly, sub-groups are formed and stard new common work on the subject, covering a broad spectrum of expertise.

3) The third objective is to provide educational training for PhD students & post-docs.

Relaxing, you said?...

Find out + on this Festival:

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