UNH Ph.D. Student Wins Prestigious NASA Award

Thanapon "Bank" Aiamsai, a UNH Ph.D. student in the Space Science Center, was awarded $148,714 after having his proposal to NASA’s Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) Early Career Research Program accepted. As a Future Investigator, Aiamsai is primarily responsible for writing the proposal and carrying out the proposed work.

 

The three-year project, titled “Investigating the source terms affecting kinetic entropy density involving energy conversion in space plasmas,” uses theory and 1D Vlasov Simulations to study how electromagnetic forces are responsible for changing plasma entropy. Studying how entropy changes provides insights into how space plasmas gain or lose energy. Processes that transfer energy to the plasma can create hazardous conditions for our astronauts, satellites, power grid, and other space- and ground-based assets.

 

Dense plasmas and gasses obey the laws of thermodynamics because collisions redistribute any extra energy into heat and keeping the system near local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE). Space plasmas, however, are sparse and nearly collisionless so extra energy in the plasma ends up pushing the plasma far from LTE where kinetic physics is important. A recent study (Cassak, et al. 2023) used entropy to create a generalized theory of energy transfer in kinetic plasmas. The theory, however, does not contain a source term to indicate what causes the changes in entropy and energy. Aiamsai's work will identify the source terms and study how they are responsible for changes in entropy and energy.