Princeton University Gravity Initiative Spring Seminar Series

The group plans to meet in person in the PGI space and lunch will be provided.  The speaker, Jay Armas, will be remote.

Abstract: Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is a theory with a broad range of applications, from plasma physics to heavy-ion collisions and astrophysics. In this talk, I will show how methodologies in formal hydrodynamics allows to reformulate MHD in terms of symmetry considerations. In particular, I will show that MHD can be viewed as a theory of superfluidity and highlight its usefulness as a simpler way of keeping track of dissipative effects and equilibrium configurations. Based on this formulation, I will discuss a promising model of MHD and show that for a given toy model of a relativistic plasma it cures linear stability and causality issues typically inherent to relativistic hydrodynamics.