M. Salimullah

Professor M. Salimullah, born on January 5, 1949 at Dhaka, Bangladesh, is Dean, Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and Chairman of Department of Physics in Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh. passed B.Sc.(Hons) and M.Sc.(Thesis) in Physics from the University of Dhaka in 1971 and 1973, respectively. He began his career with a research fellowship on theoretical nuclear physics at the University of Dhaka and joined Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh as a lecturer in physics in March 1975, and has since become Dean, Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and Chairman of Department of Physics there He obtained Ph.D. in Physics from IIT Delhi in 1980 on "Nonlinear Interactions of Electromagnetic Waves in Plasmas and Semiconductors". Prof. Salimullah has been actively engaged in teaching and research since his joining Jahangirnagar University. He was the first and only Ph.D. in Plasma Physics when he began from a scratch to organize effective research in Plasma Physics in Bangladesh. He has been able to organize a successful research group at Jahangirnagar University and his students have earned a good name at home and abroad.

cientific career

In 1983 Prof. Salimullah visited The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College of Science and Technology, London for one year for post-doctoral research at the invitation of the British Royal Society. Since 1983 he paid several research visits to the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy in the capacity of an Associate Member of the Centre, Visiting Scientistship Programme of ICTP, and Italian Laboratory Programme, and worked at the National Institute for Fusion Science, Nagoya, Japan on a Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) Programme. He also paid repeated research visits and participated in collaborative research at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, University of St. Andrews, Rutherford Appleton Lab, UK, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology, Japan, Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany, and University of California, San Diego, USA.

His research interest includes parametric instabilities in laser-produced plasmas, nonlinear effects in semiconductor plasmas, laser-plasma beat wave accelerators, and dusty plasmas of space and laboratory conditions. His recent works on dusty plasmas, in particular waves and instabilities and the theory of Coulomb dust crystal formations in dusty environments, have initiated a lot of interest in the plasma physics community of the world. He has to his credit more than 150 research papers so far published in international journals.

He is associated with the ICTP, Trieste, Italy for the last 20 years and served as a member of the editorial board for the Bulletin of the Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies apart from membership in a number of national organizations. He participated in many international meetings and delivered lectures as invited speaker at a number of national and international conferences, seminars and symposia, etc.

Awards

For his contribution to research in Physics, Prof. Salimullah has been awarded several times both nationally and internationally. These include :

The H.P. Roy Gold Medal by the University of Dhaka in 1981;The Joint Award by Bangladesh Academy of Science and the Third World Academy of Sciences in 1986;The Bangladesh Universities Grants Commission Award in 1988;The Asiatic Society Award 2001;The Senior Scientist Award by the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences in 2002; He received the 7th "Kharazmi International Prize" from the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1994 for his research project on semiconductor plasma instabilities, and “The ISESCO Science Prize 2003” at the OIC meeting in 2003.

Research in Plasma Physics

During his more than twenty years of scientific carrier, Dr Salimullah has worked in diverse areas of plasma physics which have potential applications in fusion energy and space science. He also worked in the area of solid state plasma physics and published many papers in that area as well. Recently, Dr Salimullah has been focusing in the area of dusty plasma physics, which has wide ranging applications in processing plasmas, in astrophysics, and in the Earth's mesosphere. Dr Salimullah has significantly contributed to wave-wave and wave-particle interactions with applications to tokamak and laser produced plasmas. He developed novel techniques to investigate kinetic parametric instabilities that are responsible for the anomalous absorption of wave energy in plasmas. On the other hand, Dr Salimullah greatly contributed to the dusty plasma physics by initiating the research work on the wave propagation including dust correlations, waves and instabilities in self-gravitating systems (with applications to molecular clouds and star formation), as well as charged dust grain attraction due to wakefields in magnetized plasmas. Some of the above mentioned works are used by colleagues throughout the globe. In this respect, one would say that Dr. Salimullah has emerged as one of the leaders in dusty plasma physics from the developing countries. This is certified by his numerous invitation to many industrial countries (e.g. USA, UK, Germany and Japan) where he efficiently interacts with colleagues to produce materials which are of very high quality.

Dr Salimullah has been invited to deliver invited talks at several international conferences where he proved his communication skills. He is a well organized lecturer and is capable of interacting with the audience in an effective manner.

Dr Salimullah has the ability of writing high quality research proposals which are chosen for funding. He has supervised many predoctoral and post doctoral students and has worked with several distinguished physicists at the international level. He is able to provide a leadership to a group of students and young researchers and conduct research that is of international level. He developed an active research group and diversified himself into several areas of plasma physics, ranging from fusion devices to space plasmas. He developed elegant theories of

parametric instabilities of electron cyclotron waves, lower hybrid waves and ion

cyclotron waves under different practical situations and explained many of the experimental observations. He made profound contributions to the theory of waves and instabilities in dusty plasmas. His contributions in developing concepts on Coulomb crystals are specially very significant.

Dr. Salimullah has collaborated extensively with top ranking plasma groups at Imperial College London, NIFS Nagoya, ICTP, UCSD, Rutherford-Appleton Lab, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Max-Planck Institut fur Extraterrestrische Physik, Garching, Germany. Each of these collaborations/visits has been very productive.

Dr. Salimullah has demonstrated eminent leadership qualities. He has served his University in various administrative capacities with great distinction.

Dr Salimullah is a creative physicist and has an international stature. He is humble and easy to work with. Besides, he is extremely hard working, goal oriented, and willing to share his knowledge with others.

Dr. Salimullah along with his collaborators worked on various branches of Nonlinear Plasma Physics and the Physics of Dusty Plasmas in space and laboratory Situations during more than last 20 years. The major areas of research include

i) Parametric instabilities, Harmonic generations, Self-focusing in laser-plasma interactions,

ii) Effects of self-generated magnetic fields, iii) Relativistic modifications,

iv) Laser-plasma beat wave accelerators, v) Nonlinear effects in semiconductor plasmas, and vi) Physics of dusty plasmas.

A detailed investigations on stimulated Brillouin and Raman scatterings and modulational and filamentation instabilities of laser radiation and other parametric instabilities were carried out systematically. The growth rates and threshold of these instabilities were found to depend on power densities of the propagating beams and other properties of the systems. These processes are responsible for the coupling of the laser energy to the targets in laser-matter irradiation experiments. The harmonic generations show sharp dimensional resonances in the power conversion efficiencies.

A high power laser beam spontaneously self-generates a dc magnetic field of the order of a few megagauss, which in turn significantly affects the nonlinear propagation off Bernstein modes, causes enhanced stimulated scatterings, two-plasmon-dacay and other parametric instabilities. Relativistic excitation of electrostatic waves by co-propagating laser beams and their consequent stabilities were studied, which are relevant in plasma based particle accelerators for achieving ultra-high energy particle accelerators.

Thorough studies on nonlinear effects of large-amplitude laser/microwave radiation in parabolic or nonparabolic semiconductors (e.g., InSb, CdS, Ge, etc.) or many valley semiconductors like GaAs have been carried out. These studies find applications in diagnostics, characterization, and other optical properties in semiconductor device technologies.

In recent years, a significant contribution has been made by Prof. Salimullah and his co-workers to the understanding of the physics of dust-plasma environments in space and laboratory situations. A number of fundamental new modes, particularly the dust-lower-hybrid wave, have been shown to exist for the first time in plasmas which occur invariably in the presence of magnetic fields. The resonant wave-particle interactions involving these new waves have been shown to provide the fundamental mechanism of attraction among the highly charged and massive dust grains of the same polarity leading to the dust-coagulation for the formation of structures in molecular clouds in interstellar and other astrophysical environments and dust-Coulomb crystallization of new materials for the future in the laboratory conditions. The modification of Debye-Hückel potential in magnetized plasmas and existence of

Shukla-Nambu-Salimullah potential is another recent significant contribution in Plasma Physics.

See also

* Plasma Physics
* Quantum electrodynamics
* International Centre for Theoretical Physics
* Astrophysical plasma