The course
Syllabus
Three lectures over two days · 3 & 5 November 2026
Three lectures, each roughly a half-day, building from the fundamentals of relativistic magnetohydrodynamics to the physics of coherent radio emission and the newest ideas on “astrophysical lasers”.
Level. Advanced graduate course. A working knowledge of electrodynamics and basic plasma physics is assumed. Bring questions, there is time for discussion at the end of each day.
Lectures · click to expand
- Primer on relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)
- The force-free limit
- The pulsar equation
- The Blandford–Znajek process
Why it matters. Force-free electrodynamics is the language of pulsar magnetospheres and black-hole jets; the Blandford–Znajek process is how a spinning black hole powers them.
- Reactive instabilities
- Kinetic instabilities
- Nonlinear instabilities
Why it matters. Pulsar radio emission and Fast Radio Bursts are far too bright to be incoherent: some collective plasma process must radiate in phase. These are the candidates.
- Primer on laser–plasma interaction; the parameters a0 (nonlinearity) and χ (quantum effects)
- Radiation formation, radiation reaction, ponderomotive effects
- Nonlinear scattering processes and mesoscopic effects
Why it matters. Near a magnetar an FRB is a relativistically strong wave, a0 ≫ 1: the same physics as high-intensity laser experiments on Earth, at astrophysical scale.