Research interests

Waves, turbulence and nonlinear phenomena in fluids and plasma.

Applications

• environmental physics
• transport in fluids
• plasma confinement

Areas of Research

• Waves on the surface of fluids
• Turbulent flows
• Wave-particle interaction
• Phenomena in rotating fluids
• Self-organization in turbulence
• Turbulence in toroidal plasmas
• Magnetic confinement of plasma

Recent publications

Punzmann H., Francois N., Xia H., Falkovich G. and Shats M.
Generation and reversal of surface flows by propagating waves,
Nature Physics 10, 658-663 (2014). doi:10.1038/nphys3041

Francois N., Xia H., Punzmann H., Ramsden S., and Shats M. 
Three-dimensional fluid motion in Faraday waves: Creation of vorticity and generation of two-dimensional turbulence, 
Physical Review X 4, 021021 (2014)

Xia H., Francois N., Punzmann H., and Shats M. 
Taylor particle dispersion during transition to fully developed two-dimensional turbulence, 
Physical Review Letters 112, 104501 (2014)

Xu H., Pumir A., Falkovich G., Bodenschatz E., Shats M., Xia H., Francois N., and Boffetta G. 
Flight-crash events in turbulence, 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA 111, 7558-7563 (2014). doi:10.1073/pnas.1321682111

Xia H., Francois N., Punzmann H., and Shats M. 
Lagrangian scale of particle dispersion in turbulence, 
Nature Communications 4:2013 doi: 10.1038/ncomms3013 (2013)

Francois N., Xia H., Punzmann H., and Shats M. 
Inverse energy cascade and emergence of large coherent vortices in turbulence driven by Faraday waves, 
Physical Review Letters 110, 194501 (2013)

Books

Turbulence and Coherent Structures in Fluids, Plasmas and Nonlinear Media, 
World Scientific Lecture Notes in Complex Systems, ISBN 981-256-698-8 (2006) [link] 
editors Michael Shats & Horst Punzmann