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Proceedings of the EPS Conference on Plasma Physics

Contributed papers presented at every EPS Conference on Plasma Physics back to the first one in Munich in 1966 can now be accessed through a single web page.

Contributed papers presented at the 2023 conference in Bordeaux can be found here.


Calls for prize nominations

  • 2024 EPS Plasma Physics Division Innovation Award: nominations have now closed
  • 2024 Landau-Spitzer Prize: deadline 1st April 2024 – more information here
  • 2024 EPS – PPCF Sylvie Jacquemot Early Career Prize: deadline 29th February 2024 – more information here

2024 Hannes Alfvén Prize

The 2024 EPS Hannes Alfvén Prize is jointly awarded to professor Tünde Fülöp (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) and professor Per Helander (Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Greifswald, Germany) for outstanding contributions to theoretical plasma physics, yielding groundbreaking results that significantly impact the understanding and optimization of magnetically confined fusion plasmas.

Professors Tünde Fülöp and Per Helander have significantly advanced plasma theory through a number of fundamental contributions. Their research spans many topics including runaway electrons, kinetic instabilities and transport processes in magnetized plasmas. By pinpointing key physical mechanisms, they have catalyzed innovative developments in experimental devices for nuclear fusion applications.

Professor Tünde Fülöp has been a leader in the field of disruptions and relativistic “runaway” electrons associated with these events. She has systematically explored the physics of runaway electrons in tokamaks and beyond, and conducted unprecedented modelling efforts applicable to both existing experiments and future devices. As part of this endeavour, Professor Fülöp has investigated various facets of the problem, including runaway-electron-driven electromagnetic instabilities, the impact of different collision types, radiation reaction effects, and the role of partially ionized impurities on runaway electron dynamics. Additionally, she has evaluated and optimized disruption mitigation strategies involving external magnetic perturbations and massive material injection. Furthermore, Professor Fülöp has played a crucial role in overseeing the development of several open-source, state-of-the-art runaway modelling tools and synthetic diagnostics. These tools have gained widespread use in the scientific community, reflecting her commitment to advancing collective knowledge in the field.

Professor Per Helander has obtained seminal results in the theory of stellarator plasmas by systematically exploring the question of how the properties of magnetically confined plasmas depend on the geometry of the magnetic field. In most such plasmas, turbulent transport caused by micro-instabilities arising from plasma density and temperature gradients poses a significant challenge. Professor Helander foresaw a crucial development, the absence of the most important density-gradient-driven instability in certain types of magnetic fields. This prediction is believed to underpin the remarkable record plasma performance achieved in the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator. In addressing long-standing concerns about neoclassical impurity accumulation in stellarators, professor Helander demonstrated a possible route to avoiding it in collisionality regimes relevant to reactors. Furthermore, he identified important differences between stellarators and tokamaks concerning plasma rotation. On large scales, it is relatively slow in stellarators and governed by neoclassical processes even in the presence of turbulent transport, and on small scales zonal flows behave differently. These and other revelations have shaped the general understanding of stellarator plasmas and the burgeoning field of stellarator optimization.


50th EPS DPP Plasma Physics conference

The 50th EPS DPP Plasma Physics conference will be held from July 8th to July 12th 2024 in Salamanca, Spain.

More information on the conference website.

Reflejos de la Catedrales de Salamanca


49th EPS DPP Plasma Physics conference

The 49th EPS DPP Plasma Physics conference was held from July 3rd to July 7th 2023 at the Bordeaux Congress Center (Bordeaux, France) with, among other very facinating talks, the lectures given by the 2023 Hannes Alfvén and Innovation prize recipients.

It was be also the opportunity to encourage the youngest researchers and highlight their ongoing studies through two sets of awards.

The 2023 PPCF / EPS / IUPAP Student Poster Prizes were granted to:

  • Sophie Gorno (EPFL, Switzerland) for her poster “Experiments and modelling to characterize the effect of connection length on power exhaust in TCV”,
    special mentions to Paul Heinrich (IPP-Garching, Germany) for “Analysis of shattered pellet injection in ASDEX Upgrade”, Lina Velarde (University of Seville, Spain) for “Effect of Edge Localized Modes and magnetic perturbations on fast ion confinement in MAST-U”; Paul Mulholland (TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands) for “Enhanced transport at high plasma beta due to subthreshold kinetic ballooning modes in Wendelstein 7-X geometry” and Alessandro Balestri (EPFL, Switzerland) for “Role of aspect ration in confinement enhancement in negative triangularity plasmas”
  • Radka Štefaníková (HZDR Dresden, Germany) for her poster “Spatially resolved X-ray emission lines as a signature of electron dynamics in short-pulse solid-density laser-plasma interaction”,
  • Michael Nastac (Oxford University, UK) for his poster “Irreversible stochastic heating via phase-space entropy cascade in nearly collisionless plasma turbulence”,
  • Swarnima Singh (Institute for Plasma Research, India) for her poster “Experimental observation of a triple point for a complex (dusty) plasma”.

For the 2023 Kyushu University Itoh project Prize, three highly recommended presentations were awarded, since they were too competitive to select a winner. The three selected presentations were:

  • Mario Raeth for “Excitation of high frequency waves in 6D kinetic Vlasov ITG simulation”,
  • Jean Cazobonne for “Experimental and numerical evidence of electron turbulent transport enhancement by electron-cyclotron waves in tokamaks”,
  • Oliver Panico for “Transport and zonal flows dynamics in flux-driven interchange and drift waves turbulence”.

2023 EPS-PPD PhD Innovation Prize

The 2023 Innovation Prize of the EPS Plasma Division is awarded to Prof. Dr. Annemie Bogaerts (head of the PLASMANT research group, University of Antwerp, Belgium) and Dr. Georgi Trenchev (CTO of the climate tech start-up D-CRBN, Belgium) for their efforts that bring plasma-based CO2 conversion from the lab to industry.


2023 EPS-PPD PhD Research Awards

The 2023 PhD Research Awards of the EPS Plasma Division are awarded to:

  • Dr Luis Gil (Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal) for his thesis on “Stationary ELM-free H-mode in ASDEX Upgrade”,
  • Dr Maurizio Giacomin (Swiss Plasma Center, EPLF, Lausanne, Switzerland) for his thesis on “Turbulent transport regimes in the tokamak boundary”,
  • Dr Livio Verra (Technical University Munich, Germany) for his thesis on “Electron Bunch Seeding of the Self-Modulation Instability in Plasma”, and
  • Dr David Hosking (University of Oxford, UK) for his thesis on “The decay of MHD turbulence and the primordial origin of magnetic fields in cosmic voids”.

The 2022 Lev D. Landau and Lyman Spitzer Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to Plasma Physics, jointly sponsored by the Plasma Physics Divisions of the American Physical Society and the European Physical Society, is going to:
– Christopher Chen (Queen Mary University London, UK),
– Gregory Howes (University of Iowa, USA), and
– Kristopher Klein (University of Arizona, USA)
for “the theoretical development of the field-particle correlation technique and its application to spacecraft measurements directly showing that electron Landau damping plays a role in the dissipation of space plasma turbulence.”

The 2022 Selection Committee was composed of William Heidbrink (Chair), Vladimir Tikhonchuk (Vice Chair), Andrea Ciardi, Tammy Ma, Kristel Cromb and Troy Carter.

More information on the recipients on the APS website.
More information on the prize here.


On 1st July 2022, Richard Dendy stepped down as Chair of the EPS Plasma Physics Division at the closing session of the 48th Annual European Conference on Plasma Physics, after leading the division for exactly six years. His successor as Chair is Kristel Crombé, who has been Hon. Sec. of the EPS-PPD Board since 2016.


The EPS condemns the continuing attacks by the Russian Federation against Ukraine.
Read the statement.


BP&IF conference announcements here


Implementation guidance on the Plan S principles released on November 27, 2018.
More information on the cOAlition S webpage.


Mentoring scheme for Women in Physics: for more information, click here.


JET plasmaLULI2000 laser hall


Objectives of the Plasma Physics Division

  • to unite European scientists interested in the physics of fully and partially ionized gases
  • to promote research and teaching in plasma physics and its applications, to facilitate research collaboration and to represent European physicists outside Europe
  • to coordinate activities with the other physical societies, such as the American Physical Society and the Physical Society of Japan
  • to collaborate on the Editorial Board of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion.

The Plasma Physics Division is responsible for the annual EPS Conference on Plasma Physics and for granting several Awards.


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