Vitaly Bychkov received his M.S. (1991) and Ph.D. (1994) in
Physics and Mathematics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and
Technology, and a Philosophy Licentiate from Uppsala University,
Sweden in 1993. He joined Umea University, Sweden as an Assistant
Professor in 1996, and was promoted to Associate Professor
(Lecturer) in 2000 and Full Professor in 2008.
Professor Bychkov conducts research in combustion,
hydrodynamics, plasma, astrophysics and related areas (detailed description can be
found here) as part of the
Nonlinear Physics Group at Umea University. He has published 2
monographs and about 70 peer-reviewed articles as of 2009. The list
of his papers is given here. The
following is a representative list of the specific problems that he
is currently interested in.
- Combustion
- Dynamics and stability of laminar flames
- Propagation of turbulent flames
- Flame-acoustic and flame-shock interaction
- Flame acceleration, explosion triggering, detonation
- Flame ignition, burning in engines
- Fluid Dynamics
- Rayleigh-Taylor instability and other hydrodynamic
instabilities
- Bubble motion in fluids
- Rotational and irrotational flows
- Turbulence
- Flow in pipes
- Heat transfer and phase transitions
- Acoustics, shocks, explosions
- Plasma Physics
- Inertial confined fusion
- Magneto-hydrodynamics
- Plasma equilibrium
- Hydrodynamic and magneto-hydrodynamic instabilities in
plasma
- Nonlinear effects in plasma
- Shocks in plasma
- Plasma surface waves
- Quantum plasma
- Nonlinear Physics
- Nonlinear oscillations and waves
- Weak nonlinearity and perturbation methods
- Wave interaction, shocks and solitons, bifurcations
- Front propagation, instabilities and nonlinear stabilization,
fractals
- Astrophysics
- Supernova events
- Thermonuclear explosions
- White dwarfs
- Gravitational collapse
The Collaboration
The collaboration was initiated upon the visit by Professor
Bychkov to Princeton in March, 2009, with Dr. Slava
Akkerman, who received his Ph.D. from Umea University and is
presently a member of the Research Staff in our group, leading the
collaboration, and with the participation of our students who are
interested in the dynamics of flame propagation. At present, the
collaboration is along two main directions:
- The phenomena of deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT),
particularly in tubes
- Dynamics and stability of outwardly-expanding flame fronts
including the Darrieus-Landau, diffusional-thermal and
Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities, under either terrestrial or
supernovae conditions
- pseudo-combustion phenomena in advanced materials including
doping processes in organic semiconductors and magnetic avalanches
in crystals of molecular/nano-magnets
The collaboration has resulted in the following
publications:
- V. Bychkov, V. Akkerman, D. Valiev, C.K. Law, Role of
Compressibility in Moderating Flame Acceleration in Tubes, Phys.
Rev. E 81 (2), 026309 (2010)
- D. Valiev, V. Bychkov, V. Akkerman, C.K. Law, L.E. Eriksson,
Flame Acceleration in Channels with Obstacles in the
Deflagration-to-Detonation Transition, Combust. Flame 157 (5),
1012-1021 (2010)
- V. Akkerman, C.K. Law, V. Bychkov, L.E. Eriksson, Analysis of
Flame Acceleration Induced by Wall Friction in Open Tubes, Phys.
Fluids 22 (5), 053606 (2010)
- V. Bychkov, V. Akkerman, D. Valiev, C.K. Law, Influence of Gas
Compression on Flame Acceleration in Channels with Obstacles,
Combust. Flame 157 (10), 2008-2011 (2010)
- V. Akkerman, C.K. Law, V. Bychkov, Self-Similar Accelerative
Propagation of Expanding Wrinkled Flames and Explosion Triggering,
Phys. Rev. E 83 (2), 026305 (2011)
- V. Bychkov, P. Matyba, V. Akkerman, M. Modestov, D. Valiev, G.
Brodin, C.K. Law, M. Marklund, L. Edman, Speedup of Doping Fronts
in Organic Semiconductors through Plasma Instability, Phys. Rev.
Lett. 107 (1), 016103 (2011).