Professor Gianluca Gregori has been awarded the Institute of Physics’ 2022 Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin medal and prize. The award recognises Professor Gregori’s pioneering experiments that have established laboratory astrophysics as a tool to study turbulent magnetised plasmas, particularly dynamo amplification, particle acceleration and heat conduction. The prize is one of the IOP’s silver subject medals and recognises distinguished contributions to plasma, solar or space physics.
Using a novel target design and the advanced diagnostics capabilities available at the largest laser facilities in the world, Professor Gregori produced a large-scale turbulent plasma and was able to fully characterise the plasma properties and magnetic fields. He was able to demonstrate the amplification of seed magnetic fields by the turbulent dynamo – a long-sought goal of experimental plasma physics, as well the evolution of the field beyond the initial nonlinear growth. In more recent experiments, Professor Gregori's group investigated the suppression of classical heat transport in such turbulent and magnetised plasmas – a process that is believed to play an important role in hot and diffuse gas that fills clusters of galaxies (and more generally in high-beta plasmas) where it regulates the overall energy balance.
‘I am very grateful to IOP for this award,’ comments Professor Gregori. ‘It goes without saying that all of this was made possible by the help of many collaborators in the UK and overseas as well as the hard work of our bright students and postdocs to whom I am in debt.’
Professor Gregori is the tenth recipient of the medal and the fourth recipient from Oxford’s Department of Physics. He joins Professor Peter Norreys who was awarded the prize in 2013, Professor Alexander Schekochihin who was awarded it in 2019 and Professor Simon Hooker who received it in 2020.
‘It is wonderful to see another Oxford physicist join the list of Payne-Gaposchkin laureates!’ comments Professor Ian Shipsey, Head of the Department of Physics at Oxford. ‘Our work in this field is world-leading and Gianluca’s advances are exemplary.’