Primary Department
School of Physical Sciences
Phone number: 01 700
5298
Email Address
miles.turner@dcu.ie
Academic biography
Miles Turner was an undergraduate at Imperial College, of London University, where he received a B. Sc. in Physics with first class honours in 1986. He then become a research student at St Andrews University, in Scotland, where he obtained a Ph. D. for a thesis dealing with the kinetics of excimer lasers in 1990. After a brief post-doctoral appointment in St Andrews, he joined Dublin City University in 1991 as a lecturer in the School of Physical Sciences. He become a senior lecturer in 2001 and an associate professor in 2003. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley in 1997-98, where he taught in the Graduate School. He has also been a visiting scholar at Flinders University of South Australia, the University of Essen, and Ecole Polytechnique. He was the Associate Director of the National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology from 1999 to 2004, and was Director between 2004 and 2020. In summer 2006, he became the Head of Research Unit of Association EURATOM-DCU, the organising body for fusion energy research in Ireland.
He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, Fellow of the Institute of Physics, a Chartered Scientist, and an ordinary member of various other professional societies.
Research interests
Miles Turner's early research at St Andrews University was concerned with the kinetics of various types of excimer lasers, in particular with modelling the plasma chemistry leading to pumping of the upper laser level, and with issues of stability that arise when these lasers are pumped by discharges. He also dealt with various related aspects of pulsed power technology. This work produced what was probably at the time the most sophisticated and most comprehensively validated model for any discharge excited excimer laser, which was later developed into a two-dimensional model with a refined treatment of discharge inhomogeneity produced by preionization and realistic electrode structures. This two dimensional model, which has not since been improved upon, was later used as an engineering design tool by AEA Technology and Lumonics.
In 1991, he changed his research area to low-pressure discharges for plasma processing, where he was among the pioneers of the use of kinetic simulation methods. This work lead to a string of notable publications dealing with various aspects of electrons kinetics in plasma processing discharges. These papers established an international reputation, and began the sequence of invited lectures at international meetings and wider engagement with international community via scholarly exchanges that continues to the present. Miles Turner's most recent work has explored the physics implications of multi-frequency excitation of capacitive discharges, such as the implications for sheath structure [J. Phys. D 36, 1810 (2003)], onset of electromagnetic effects [Plasma Sources Sci. Technol. 11, 283 (2002)] and electron heating [Phys. Rev. Lett 92, 205001 (2006)]. He has been broadly interested in the applications of plasma discharges, in fusion energy as well as in plasma processing. A new focus of interest has been the development of simple models as a platform for control algorithms.
