Senior Lecturer
- Location
- Room 417
- Phone numbers
- 9007 (Office)
64 3 479 9007 (Office Direct Dial)
- jonathan.squire@otago.ac.nz
- Research Group
- https://apf.physics.otago.ac.nz
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Biography
I carried out my undergraduate studies in physics at the University of Otago before going to Princeton University to join the PhD programme in plasma physics in 2010. After graduating in 2015, I was a postdoctoral fellow in the astronomy department at Caltech, then joined the Otago physics department as a research fellow in late 2018.
My research covers the broad area of astrophysical and geophysical fluid and plasma dynamics. I am most interested in the theory of the basic physics that governs fluids and plasmas: instabilities, turbulence, the generation of magnetic fields, and the behaviour of collisionless plasmas. Such processes control a wide variety of astrophysical and geophysical systems, including the Earth's magnetic field, planet formation in accretion disks, the solar wind and solar cycle, galaxy clusters, and the magnetization of the entire universe. My work involves a mix of analytic theory and large computer simulations, and I keep up a keen interest in developing robust numerical algorithms that allow us to better understand the complex multi-scale physics of plasmas and fluids.