I am an experimental physicist and a planetary scientist. In June 2023, I am starting as an Associate Research Physicist specializing in liquid metal applications for next-gen fusion devices at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).
My research interests include but are not limited to liquid metal magnetohydrodynamics, geophysical and astrophysical turbulence, planetary and stellar dynamos, and chaotic systems. I have previously worked on the experimental investigation of the heat and momentum transfer in liquid gallium rotating and non-rotating magnetoconvection, complemented with theoretical and numerical analyses. This work would further our understanding of the roles of rotation and magnetic fields in planetary and stellar dynamo processes.
In 2023, I received my Ph.D. in Geophysics and Space Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, under the supervision of Prof. Jonathan Aurnou.
I love music and outdoor.
Selected Works
- Xu, Y., Horn, S., & Aurnou, J. (2022). Thermoelectric Precession in Turbulent Magnetoconvection. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 930, A8.
- Xu, Y., Horn, S., & Aurnou, J. (2023). Transition from wall modes to multimodality in liquid gallium magnetoconvection. Phys. Rev. Fluids, 8, 103503.
- Grannan, A., Cheng, J., Aggarwal, A., Hawkins, E., Xu, Y., Horn, S., Sanchez-Alvarez, J., & Aurnou, J. (2022). Experimental pub crawl from Rayleigh-B\’enard to magnetostrophic convection. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 939, R1.