Nick Murphy

Postdoctoral Fellow

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

I am working with John Raymond on a project which incorporates data from UVCS, LASCO, and EIT aboard SOHO to investigate the energy budget of coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Previous work has indicated that heating of these CMEs continues even after the ejecta leaves the region from where it was launched. Our goal is to increase the sample of CMEs whose energy budgets have been determined and to improve constraints on theories for the heating of this material.

Previously, I was a graduate student in Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the supervision of Carl Sovinec (Engineering Physics) and Ellen Zweibel (Astronomy) and supported by the Center for Magnetic Self-Organization in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas.  My thesis research involved simulating astrophysically relevant laboratory plasmas (e.g., the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment) using the NIMROD extended MHD code to gauge the impact of global effects on the process of magnetic reconnection.  My Ph.D. thesis is available here.

My general research interests include plasma astrophysics, solar physics, coronal mass ejections, UV spectroscopy, numerical simulation of plasmas, magnetic reconnection, magnetized turbulence, dissipation mechanisms in astrophysical and space plasmas, solar and stellar winds, and relationships between laboratory, astrophysical, and space plasma physics.

---

Nick Murphy
namurphy _AT_ cfa.harvard.edu