Dominique Escande

Dominique Franck Escande (born 1948) is a French physicist. He is known for his research in foundations and methods of plasma physics, wave-particle interactions in plasmas, Hamiltonian dynamics, deterministic chaos, thermonuclear fusion by magnetic confinement, self-organization of the reversed field pinch, plasma-wall self-organization in magnetic fusion

Education and career After graduating in physics in 1967 from the École polytechnique, Dominique Franck Escande became a graduate student in physics at Paris-Sud University. There he graduated in 1971 with a (DEA) and a Ph.D. in 1978. From 1981 to 1992 he was a CNRS researcher at the École polytechnique, where he held an appointment as maître de conférences (assistant professor) in physics. During the years of his appointment at the École polytechnique, he also worked at several other scientific institutions. For the academic year 1983–1984 he was on sabbatical at the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Fusion Studies (IFS) From 1987 to 1992 he was a part-time consultant for X-Recherche Service. From 1988 to 1992 Escande held an appointment as CNRS researcher in this laboratory. He is the co-author with Yves Elskens (a physics professor at the University of Provence) of the book Microscopic dynamics of plasmas and chaos (2003, IOP Publishing); with a 2019 paperback edition published by CRC Press. and is an internationally recognized expert on RFPs. More recently, he worked on plasma-wall self-organization.

In 1994 Escande was awarded the Prix Paul Langevin.

Selected publications

Escande, D.F. (1975). "Saturation of the gentle bump instability in a random plasma, Phys. Rev. Letters, 35, 995

Escande, D. F., Martin, P., Ortolani, S., Buffa, A., Franz, P., Marrelli, L.... & Zanca, P. (2000). Quasi-single-helicity reversed-field-pinch plasmas. Physical review letters, 85(8), 1662. Escande, D. F., Paccagnella, R., Cappello, S., Marchetto, C., & D'Angelo, F. (2000). Chaos healing by separatrix disappearance and quasisingle helicity states of the reversed field pinch. Physical review letters, 85(15), 3169. Cappello, S., & Escande, D. F. (2000). Bifurcation in viscoresistive MHD: The Hartmann number and the reversed field pinch. Physical review letters, 85(18), 3838. Escande, D. F., & Elskens, Y. (2002). Proof of quasilinear equations in the chaotic regime of the weak warm beam instability. Physics Letters A, 302(2-3), 110-118. Escande, D. F., & Elskens, Y. (2003). Proof of quasilinear equations in the strongly nonlinear regime of the weak warm beam instability. Physics of Plasmas, 10(5), 1588-1594.

Bonfiglio, D., Cappello, S., & Escande, D. F. (2005). Dominant electrostatic nature of the reversed field pinch dynamo. Physical review letters, 94(14), 145001.

Escande, D. F., & Sattin, F. (2012). Calculation of transport coefficient profiles in modulation experiments as an inverse problem. Physical Review Letters, 108(12), 125007. Escande, D. F., Elskens, Y., & Doveil, F. (2015). Direct path from microscopic mechanics to Debye shielding, Landau damping and wave-particle interaction. Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, 57(2), 025017. Escande, D. F., Elskens, Y., & Doveil, F. (2015). Uniform derivation of Coulomb collisional transport thanks to Debye shielding. Journal of Plasma Physics, 81(1), 305810101. Escande, D. F., Doveil, F., & Elskens, Y. (2016). N-body description of Debye shielding and Landau damping. Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, 58(1), 014040.

Escande, D. F. (2018). From thermonuclear fusion to Hamiltonian chaos. The European Physical Journal H, 43(4), 397-420. 2018

Escande, D. F., & Sattin, F. (2021). Breakdown of adiabatic invariance of fast ions in spherical tokamaks. Nuclear Fusion, 61(10), 106025. Escande, D. F., Sattin, F., & Zanca, P. (2022). Plasma-wall self-organization in magnetic fusion. Nuclear Fusion, 62(2), 026001. Liu, J., Zhu, P., Escande, D. F., Zhang, J., Xia, D., Wang, Y.... & J-TEXT Team. (2023). Validation of the plasma-wall self-organization model for density limit in ECRH-assisted start-up of Ohmic discharges on J-TEXT. Nuclear Fusion, 63(9), 096009. Escande, D. F., & Momo, B. (2024). Description of magnetic field lines without arcana. Reviews of Modern Plasma Physics, 8(1), 16. Liu, J., Zhu, P., Escande, D. F., Liu, W., Xue, S., Lin, X.... & EAST team. (2026). Accessing the density-free regime with ECRH-assisted ohmic start-up on EAST. Science Advances, 12(1), eadz3040.