I. P. Shkarofsky

ISSIE P. SHKAROFSKY, M.Sc., Ph.D. (McGill) Issie P. Shkarofsky graduated in 1952 from McGill University, Montreal with a B.Sc. degree and first class honours in physics and mathematics. In the following year, 1953, he obtained his M.Sc. degree, conducting his research at the Eaton Electronics Research Laboratory, McGill University, in the fields of microwave optics and antennas. He then joined the microwave tube and noise group at the same laboratory and received his Ph.D. degree in 1957 with a thesis on modulated electron beams in space-charge-wave tubes and klystrons. After graduation, he joined the Research Laboratories of RCA Limited, Montreal, where he participated in research on microwave diffraction, millimeter waves, obstacle gain, laser applications, electromagnetic wave interaction with plasmas, plasma kinetics and theory, plasmas in space and fusion studies. From 1973 until 1977, his position was R&D Fellow at the RCA Research and Development Laboratories. At the start of 1977, he joined MPB Technologies Inc. as a R&D Fellow. In 1988, he was appointed Director of the Fusion Technology Division at MPB Technologies Inc. At MPB Technologies, he conducted research in the fields of plasmas, tokamak and laser fusion, electromagnetic theory and propagation, electron devices, radar and WISP shuttle experiments. He directed the MPBT fusion group working at the Tokamak de Varennes during its existence. Thereafter, he worked on laser fiber amplifiers. He is presently a research fellow emeritus at MPBT, after retirement in 2002. In the field of plasma and space studies, his particular interest has been in the following topics: plasma transport coefficients, collisional effects in plasmas (slightly, partially and strongly ionized), Boltzmann and Fokker-Planck theory and appropriate expansions, bremsstrahlung, magneto-hydrodynamics, re-entry plasma physics, generalized Appleton-Hartree equation for the ionosphere, laboratory simulation of geophysical phenomena such as the solar wind interaction with the magnetosphere and sheaths around satellites, strong em waves near plasma resonances, cyclotron harmonic resonances and dispersion including weakly relativistic effects, dielectric tensor elements for relativistic and slightly relativistic plasmas, diagnostics of plasmas by laser scattering, nonlinear mixing of plasma modes, Langmuir probes on satellites, VLF sheath admittance of antennas in the ionosphere, spacecraft charging/arcing/radiation, kinetics of beams in crossed-field microwave tubes, injection mode locking of a TEA laser, high power laser interaction with matter including laser gas breakdown, probe diagnostics of anisotropic laser plasmas, laser energy absorption and transport, such as the relation of hot electrons to the heat flux limit and ponderomotive corrections to transport in laser fusion, and a review of laser fusion projects for Canada. In the area of turbulence, he investigated radar scattering from turbulent plasmas, laser propagation through a turbulent atmosphere, microwave propagation through a turbulent plasma, hydrodynamic flow turbulence, arc turbulence, and radar scattering from chaff. In the field of em propagation, attention was focused on the relationship in satellite communications between rain attenuation and depolarization, site diversity studies for rain attenuation, the problems of depolarization due to imperfect antenna effects, due to rain and due to atmospheric multipath refraction in radio links, polarization tracking to compensate rain depolarization, multipath ray tracing, the functional objectives for plasma experiments using a WISP system on a shuttle, and a survey of radar clutter for a space based radar system. In 1973, he became a co-leader of the Task Force on Toroidal Machines for Fusion Canada, which ultimately led to the Tokamak de Varennes project. His most recent efforts in tokamak fusion were directed towards transport in toroidal geometry, magnetic probes to diagnose the current density moments, computer programs for current rampdown giving 2-dimensional contours of current density and poloidal flux, codes with transport covering the neo-classical to banana regime to simulate the current plateau and rampdown, codes for electron cyclotron and for lower hybrid heating and associated ray tracing in toroidal geometry, the Fokker-Planck and quasi-linear operators and various codes for lower-hybrid current drive, and the TSC equilibrium simulation code applied to the Tokamak de Varennes. Early, well-known contributions were a book on plasma kinetics and the invention of a new mathematical function, known as the Shkarofsky function, which is used in the heating of plasmas close to cyclotron resonances. He has published as a principal or co-author about 134 papers in various journals and written 172 reports on the above research areas. Dr.Shkarofsky is a member of the American Geophysical Union and a fellow of the American Physical Society and its Plasma Physics Division. He has served on the National Research Council Advisory Committee on Physics, and as professeur invite du Centre de Recherche INRS-Energie, Universite de Quebec.