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Dominique Franck Escande

Dominique Franck Escande (born 1948) is a French physicist. He is known for his research in foundations and methods of plasma physics, wave-particle interactions in plasmas, Hamiltonian dynamics, deterministic chaos, thermonuclear fusion by magnetic confinement, self-organization of the reversed field pinch, plasma-wall self-organization in magnetic fusion

Education and career

After graduating in physics in 1967 from the École polytechnique, Dominique Franck Escande became a graduate student in physics at Paris-Sud University. There he graduated in 1971 with a (DEA) and a Ph.D. in 1978. His Ph.D. thesis is entitled Ondes haute fréquence dans un plasma en présence de fluctuation de basse fréquence (High-frequency waves in a plasma in the presence of low-frequency fluctuation). From 1981 to 1992 he was a CNRS researcher at the École polytechnique, where he held an appointment as maître de conférences (assistant professor) in physics. During the years of his appointment at the École polytechnique, he also worked at several other scientific institutions. For the academic year 1983–1984 he was on sabbatical at the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Fusion Studies (IFS) (which, among other things, was the principal site for USA-Japan collaboration on theory in fusion research). From 1987 to 1992 he was a part-time consultant for X-Recherche Service. In 1988 he created, in collaboration with Fabrice Doveil, the research team Equipe Turbulence Plasma inside laboratory Physique des Intéractions Ioniques et Moléculaires (PIIM) at Université de Provence in Marseille. From 1988 to 1992 Escande held an appointment as CNRS researcher in this laboratory.

Escande was from 1992 to 1996 the head of the Département de Recherches sur la Fusion Contrôlée at CEA-Cadarache, whose activity was centered on the Tore Supra tokamak group. From 1995 to 1996 he chaired the Euratom Fusion Technology Steering Committee-Implementation. At ' (Consortium RFX) in Padua, Italy, he was from 1996 to 1998 a full-time advisor and is since 1998 a part-time advisor. In 1998 he became a CNRS researcher at the laboratory PIIM, where he now has emeritus status as Directeur de Recherche Emérite.

He contributed three book chapters. He is the co-author with Yves Elskens (a physics professor at the University of Provence) of the book Microscopic dynamics of plasmas and chaos (2003, IOP Publishing); with a 2019 paperback edition published by CRC Press.

Escande is author or co-author of many scientific articles related to the device called the reverse field pinch (RFP) and is an internationally recognized expert on RFPs. More recently, he worked on plasma-wall self-organization.

His former doctoral student Didier Bénisti has acquired an international reputation in fusion research and plasma physics.

In 1994 Escande was awarded the Prix Paul Langevin.

Selected publications

  • Escande, D.F. (1975). "Saturation of the gentle bump instability in a random plasma, Phys. Rev. Letters, 35, 995
  • Escande, D. F., Martin, P., Ortolani, S., Buffa, A., Franz, P., Marrelli, L., ... & Zanca, P. (2000). Quasi-single-helicity reversed-field-pinch plasmas. Physical review letters, 85(8), 1662.
  • Escande, D. F., Paccagnella, R., Cappello, S., Marchetto, C., & D'Angelo, F. (2000). Chaos healing by separatrix disappearance and quasisingle helicity states of the reversed field pinch. Physical review letters, 85(15), 3169.
  • Cappello, S., & Escande, D. F. (2000). Bifurcation in viscoresistive MHD: The Hartmann number and the reversed field pinch. Physical review letters, 85(18), 3838.
  • Escande, D. F., & Elskens, Y. (2002). Proof of quasilinear equations in the chaotic regime of the weak warm beam instability. Physics Letters A, 302(2-3), 110-118.
  • Escande, D. F., & Elskens, Y. (2003). Proof of quasilinear equations in the strongly nonlinear regime of the weak warm beam instability. Physics of Plasmas, 10(5), 1588-1594.
  • Bonfiglio, D., Cappello, S., & Escande, D. F. (2005). Dominant electrostatic nature of the reversed field pinch dynamo. Physical review letters, 94(14), 145001.
  • Escande, D. F., & Sattin, F. (2012). Calculation of transport coefficient profiles in modulation experiments as an inverse problem. Physical Review Letters, 108(12), 125007.
  • Escande, D. F., Elskens, Y., & Doveil, F. (2015). Direct path from microscopic mechanics to Debye shielding, Landau damping and wave-particle interaction. Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, 57(2), 025017.
  • Escande, D. F., Elskens, Y., & Doveil, F. (2015). Uniform derivation of Coulomb collisional transport thanks to Debye shielding. Journal of Plasma Physics, 81(1), 305810101.
  • Escande, D. F., Doveil, F., & Elskens, Y. (2016). N-body description of Debye shielding and Landau damping. Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, 58(1), 014040.
  • Escande, D. F. (2018). From thermonuclear fusion to Hamiltonian chaos. The European Physical Journal H, 43(4), 397-420.
  • 2018
  • Escande, D. F., & Sattin, F. (2021). Breakdown of adiabatic invariance of fast ions in spherical tokamaks. Nuclear Fusion, 61(10), 106025.
  • Escande, D. F., Sattin, F., & Zanca, P. (2022). Plasma-wall self-organization in magnetic fusion. Nuclear Fusion, 62(2), 026001.
  • Liu, J., Zhu, P., Escande, D. F., Zhang, J., Xia, D., Wang, Y., ... & J-TEXT Team. (2023). Validation of the plasma-wall self-organization model for density limit in ECRH-assisted start-up of Ohmic discharges on J-TEXT. Nuclear Fusion, 63(9), 096009.
  • Escande, D. F., & Momo, B. (2024). Description of magnetic field lines without arcana. Reviews of Modern Plasma Physics, 8(1), 16.
  • Liu, J., Zhu, P., Escande, D. F., Liu, W., Xue, S., Lin, X., ... & EAST team. (2026). Accessing the density-free regime with ECRH-assisted ohmic start-up on EAST. Science Advances, 12(1), eadz3040.

References