Liu Chen (physicist)
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Liu Chen (; born 1946 in
Hangzhou Hangzhou ( or , ; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), also romanized as Hangchow, is the capital and most populous city of Zhejiang, China. It is located in the northwestern part of the province, sitting at the head of Hangzhou Bay, whic ...
,
Zhejiang Zhejiang ( or , ; , Chinese postal romanization, also romanized as Chekiang) is an East China, eastern, coastal Provinces of China, province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable citie ...
) is an American theoretical physicist who has made original contributions to many aspects of
plasma physics Plasma ()πλάσμα
, Henry George Liddell, R ...
. He is known for the discoveries of kinetic Alfven waves, toroidal Alfven eigenmodes, and energetic particle modes; the theories of geomagnetic pulsations, Alfven wave heating, and fishbone oscillations, and the first formulation of nonlinear gyrokinetic equations. Chen retired from
University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...
(UCI) in 2012, assuming the title professor emeritus of physics and astronomy.


Biography

Chen was born in 1946 in
Hangzhou Hangzhou ( or , ; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), also romanized as Hangchow, is the capital and most populous city of Zhejiang, China. It is located in the northwestern part of the province, sitting at the head of Hangzhou Bay, whic ...
with ancestral roots in
Yuyao Yuyao () is a county-level city in the northeast of Zhejiang province, China. It is under the jurisdiction of the sub-provincial city of Ningbo. It is located west of central Ningbo, east of Hangzhou, bordering Hangzhou Bay in the north. Yuyao ...
. Chen's ancestral family name is Huang (黃), he is a descendant of Chengliang Huang (黃澄量), founder of the Five-Osmanthus Building ( 五桂樓) library, and the great scholar and thinker Zongxi Huang ( 黃宗羲). His great-grandfather, Chengyi Huang ( 黃承乙) was the mayor of Taiwan County, now
Taichung Taichung (, Wade–Giles: ''Tʻai²-chung¹'', pinyin: ''Táizhōng''), officially Taichung City, is a special municipality located in central Taiwan. Taichung has approximately 2.8 million residents and is the second most populous city of Ta ...
City, during the Guangxu period of the
Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-spea ...
. In 1950, after the defeat of the Nationalists by the Communists in the
Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on m ...
, Chen left
Mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...
with his mother, Shyue Yan King Chen (金學言, 1916–2006), and three siblings. They joined his father, Lee Chen (陳禮, 1913–2003), at the
Tiu Keng Leng Tiu Keng Leng (), formerly Rennie's Mill, is an area of Hong Kong in the Sai Kung District adjacent to Tseung Kwan O (Junk Bay). The area used to be a refugee village housing former Kuomintang officials and followers who escaped to Hong Kon ...
refugee camp in
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
, where he began his education. The Chen family moved to
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
in 1951. Chen was married to Shingshah Lee (李醒夏) in August 1969. They have one son Peijin (陳培進). Chen graduated from the
Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University The Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University (HSNU; Traditional Chinese: 國立臺灣師範大學附屬高級中學, 附中, 師大附中) is a Taiwanese senior high school (or "high school," as opposed to "middle schoo ...
in 1962. In 1966, he took his undergraduate degree at
National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; ) is a public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. The university was founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as the seventh of the Imperial Universities. It was named Taihoku Imperial University and served d ...
. Chen went to
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
for graduate schooling in 1967, where he obtained a Master of Science Degree from Washington State University, Pullman in 1969, and a Doctor of Philosophy Degree from the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
under the supervision of
Charles K. Birdsall Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "f ...
in 1972, for his research work ''I. Heating of Magnetized Plasmas by Large-Amplitude Electric Field. II. Reduction of the Grid Effects in Simulation Plasmas''. From 1972 to 1974, Chen did his postdoctoral research with Akira Hasegawa at the
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...
. They developed a theory for long-period magnetic pulsations in the magnetosphere based on resonant coupling between hydromagnetic compressional waves and transverse Alfvén continuous spectrum. This theory, later referred to as Chen-Hasegawa field-line-resonance model, successfully explained the observations in the Earth's magnetosphere by
Louis J. Lanzerotti Louis John Lanzerotti (born April 16, 1938) is an American physicist. He is a Distinguished Research Professor of physics in the ''Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research'' at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark, New Jersey. His pri ...
, and has become the standard model for magnetic pulsations in the Earth's and other planetary magnetospheres. Soon, their focus turned to the charged particle heating via resonant absorption within Alfvén wave continuous spectrum. They discovered the Kinetic Alfvén wave, which resolves the logarithmic singularity of
magnetohydrodynamic Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD; also called magneto-fluid dynamics or hydro­magnetics) is the study of the magnetic properties and behaviour of electrically conducting fluids. Examples of such magneto­fluids include plasmas, liquid metals, ...
shear Alfvén waves and plays important roles in the heating, acceleration and transport of charged particles in solar, magnetospheric, and laboratory plasmas. From 1974, Chen worked for 19 years at
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory for plasma physics and nuclear fusion science. Its primary mission is research into and development of fusion as an energy source. It is known ...
(PPPL) and
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
, there his interest was directed to the study of fusion plasmas. He, in collaboration with Edward A. Frieman, formulated and derived the first nonlinear gyrokinetic equation, the Frieman-Chen equation named in their honor, which has played a fundamental role in the physics understanding of strongly magnetized plasmas in the last decades. With Chio-Zong Cheng and Morrell S. Chance, Chen predicted the existence of hydromagnetic Alfvén bound states in laboratory plasmas due to realistic symmetry-breaking equilibrium conditions. These hydromagnetic Alfvén bound states were later observed in worldwide plasma experimental devices. Chen is also well known for his collaboration with Roscoe White and Marshall Rosenbluth in demonstrating theoretically that supra-thermal energetic particles can spontaneously excite in laboratory plasmas a unique macroscopic hydromagnetic wave, observed experimentally as “fishbones” from the magnetic signals. From 1986 until 1993, Chen served as the deputy head of the Theory Department at PPPL. In 1993, Chen became a professor of Department of Physics & Astronomy at the
University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...
(UCI). During this period, Chen discovered the existence of energetic-particle modes within the shear Alfvén wave continuous spectrum and introduced a unified theoretical framework to understand the distinctive features of different Alfvén bound states and energetic-particle continuum modes. Subsequently, in the past two decades, this theory was generalized by a series of papers written jointly with Fulvio Zonca, and named as the general fishbone-like dispersion relation. In 2000, Chen and coworkers elucidated that drift wave
turbulence In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is fluid motion characterized by chaotic changes in pressure and flow velocity. It is in contrast to a laminar flow, which occurs when a fluid flows in parallel layers, with no disruption between ...
can spontaneously generate coherent zonal flows via intensity-modulation interactions, resulting in turbulence self-regulation. This nonlinear process has a broad scope of applications and has been generalized to the zonal structures in charged particle phase space. Chen retired from UCI in 2012. Chen visited mainland China in 1975 for the first time after the normalization of US-China relationship. Chen has, throughout the years, played active roles in the development of plasma physics research as well as training next generation of plasma physicists both in mainland China and Taiwan. In 1985, Chen helped Shih-Tung Tsai and Changxuan Yu to establish the Chinese Summer School for Plasma Physics. In 2007, Chen initiated the Cross-Strait Symposium on the Fusion Energy and Plasma Science. Chen served, from 1997 to 2016, as the Founding Chairman of Foundation of Shih-Tung Tsai Award for Plasma Physics. Chen was appointed as an Honorary Research Professor at
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences The Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOPCAS ) was the result of a merger, after the communist took control of the mainland China in 1949, between the Institute of Physics of Academia Sinica (IOPAS) founded in Shanghai in 19 ...
,
Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
, in 1990, Visiting Kuang-Piu Chair Professor at
Zhejiang University Zhejiang University, abbreviated as ZJU or Zheda and formerly romanized as Chekiang University, is a national public research university based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It is a member of the prestigious C9 League and is selected into the n ...
,
Hangzhou Hangzhou ( or , ; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), also romanized as Hangchow, is the capital and most populous city of Zhejiang, China. It is located in the northwestern part of the province, sitting at the head of Hangzhou Bay, whic ...
, in 2004, and Visiting Kuo-Ting Chair Professor at
National Central University National Central University (NCU, ; Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: ''Kwet-li̍p Chung-yong Thài-ho̍k'', Wade–Giles: ''Kuo2 Li4 Chung Yang Ta4 Hsüeh2'' or ''中大'', ''Chung-ta'') is a public research university with long-standing traditions based in Taiw ...
,
Zhongli Locations * Zhongli District (), Taoyuan, Taiwan * Zhongli Township (), Gangbei District, Guigang, Guangxi, China People * Zhongli Quan () * Zhongli Mo () Other uses * Zhongli (state) (), ancient state in China *" Growing Pears" (), a shor ...
, Taiwan, in 2007. From 2006 to 2016, Chen served as the founding director of the Institute for Fusion Theory and Simulation (IFTS) at Zhejiang University. In 2016, Chen became the director emeritus. Chen has also published a graduate textbook ''Waves and Instabilities in Plasmas'' (World Scientific Publication Co., 1987), and nurtured generations of graduate students and postdocs worldwide.


Honors and awards

* 1981,
Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...
, American Physical Society * 2004, John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research, from the American Physical Society * 2008,
Hannes Alfvén Prize The Hannes Alfvén Prize is a prize established by the European Physical Society (EPS) Plasma Physics Division in 2000. The Prize is awarded annually by the European Physical Society at the EPS Conference on Plasma Physics for outstanding work in t ...
, from the
European Physical Society The European Physical Society (EPS) is a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to promote physics and physicists in Europe through methods such as physics outreach. Formally established in 1968, its membership includes the national physical so ...
* 2009,
Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...
, American Association for Advancement of Sciences * 2011,
Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...
, American Geophysical Union * 2012,
James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics The James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics is an annual American Physical Society (APS) award that is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of the Plasma Physics. It was established in 1975 by Maxwell Technologies, ...
, from the American Physical Society * 2019, Subrahmanyan Chandresekhar Prize, from the
Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies Association may refer to: *Club (organization), an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal *Trade association, an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry *Voluntary associatio ...
The 2019 Subramanyan Chandrasekhar Prize in Plasma Physics
/ref> * 2022,
Academician An academician is a full member of an artistic, literary, engineering, or scientific academy. In many countries, it is an honorific title used to denote a full member of an academy that has a strong influence on national scientific life. In syst ...
, Academia Sinica


References


External links


Information about Prof. Liu Chen
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chen, Liu 1946 births Living people 21st-century American physicists Chinese emigrants to the United States National Taiwan University alumni Princeton University faculty University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Irvine faculty Academic staff of Zhejiang University Scientists from Hangzhou Fellows of the American Physical Society American plasma physicists Members of Academia Sinica