Murphy, Nicholas
Astrophysicist
0000-0001-6628-8033
Murphy, Nicholas
Astrophysicist
My work is primarily on the development of PlasmaPy: an open source software package for plasma research and education that has applications for astrophysics, heliophysics, laboratory plasma physics, and fusion energy. I also perform simulations of magnetic reconnection (the plasma process in which magnetic energy is explosively converted into kinetic and thermal energy) in the partially ionized solar chromosphere. I am based at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, MA.
Positions
- Astrophysicist, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory 2012 -
- Lecturer on Astronomy, Harvard University 2014 -
Research Areas
Background And Education
Education And Training
- Ph.D. in Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison , Astronomy, Thesis: Simulation and Analysis of Magnetic Reconnection in a Laboratory Plasma Astrophysics Experiment 2003 - 2009
- B.S. in Astronomy & Astrophysics, General Physics, and Mathematical Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor , Astronomy 1999 - 2003
Awards And Honors
- Smithsonian Scholarly Studies Award, conferred by Smithsonian Scholarly Studies Awards, 2020
- Fellow, conferred by American Astronomical Society, 2020
- Smithsonian Scholarly Studies Award, conferred by Smithsonian Scholarly Studies Awards, 2018
Research And Grants
Co-principal Investigator On
Other Research Activities
- PlasmaPy Coordinating Committee member and core developer 2016 -
Has Expertise In Technique
- Astrophysics Technique
- Software development Technique
Publications
Selected Publications
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Article
- Hurst, N. C., Abler, M., Brown, M. R., Juno, J., Kostadinova, E. G., Murphy, N. A., Olson, J., Orlov, D. M., Schaeffer, D. B., Schaffner, D. A., Scime, E. E., Tenbarge, J. M., and Thakur, S. C. 2025. "MagNetUS: a magnetized plasma research ecosystem." Journal of Plasma Physics, 91. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022377825000017. 2025
- Rivera, Yeimy J., Landi, E., Raymond, John C., Murphy, N. A., Reep, J. W., Barnes, W., Higginson, A., Young, P., Daw, A., Pesnell, W. D., Paraschiv, A. R., Lacatus, D. A., Bryans, P., Chen, T. Y., and Del Zanna, G. 2023. "Advancing Solar and Heliospheric Science through the Ongoing Development and Support of Atomic and Laboratory Plasma Physics." Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, 10 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspas.2023.1056255. 2023
- Shen, Chengcai, Raymond, John C., and Murphy, Nicholas A. 2023. "Nonequilibrium Ionization Modeling of Petschek-type Shocks in Reconnecting Current Sheets in Solar Eruptions." The Astrophysical Journal, 943 111. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aca6e7. 2023
- Wilson, Maurice L., Raymond, John C., Lepri, Susan T., Lionello, Roberto, Murphy, Nicholas A., Reeves, Katharine K., and Shen, Chengcai. 2022. "Constraining the CME Core Heating and Energy Budget with SOHO/UVCS." The Astrophysical Journal, 927 27. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac4d35. 2022
- Astropy Collaboration, Price-Whelan, Adrian M., Lim, Pey Lian, Earl, Nicholas, Starkman, Nathaniel, Bradley, Larry, Shupe, David L., Patil, Aarya A., Corrales, Lia, Brasseur, C. E., Nöthe, Maximilian, Donath, Axel, Tollerud, Erik, Morris, Brett M., Ginsburg, Adam, Vaher, Eero, Weaver, Benjamin A., Tocknell, James, Jamieson, William, van Kerkwijk, Marten H., Robitaille, Thomas P., Merry, Bruce, Bachetti, Matteo, Günther, H. Moritz, Aldcroft, Thomas L. et al. 2022. "The Astropy Project: Sustaining and Growing a Community-oriented Open-source Project and the Latest Major Release (v5.0) of the Core Package." The Astrophysical Journal, 935 167. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac7c74. 2022
- Jara-Almonte, J., Murphy, Nicholas A., and Ji, H. 2021. "Multi-fluid and kinetic models of partially ionized magnetic reconnection." Physics of Plasmas, 28 042108. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0039860. 2021
- Ni, Lei, Ji, Hantao, Murphy, Nicholas A., and Jara-Almonte, Jonathan. 2020. "Magnetic reconnection in partially ionized plasmas." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series A, 476 90867. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2019.0867. 2020
- Mumford, Stuart, Freij, Nabil, Christe, Steven, Ireland, Jack, Mayer, Florian, Hughitt, V., Shih, Albert, Ryan, Daniel, Liedtke, Simon, Pérez-Suárez, David, Chakraborty, Pritish, K, Vishnunarayan, Inglis, Andrew, Pattnaik, Punyaslok, Sipőcz, Brigitta, Sharma, Rishabh, Leonard, Andrew, Stansby, David, Hewett, Russell, Hamilton, Alex, Hayes, Laura, Panda, Asish, Earnshaw, Matt, Choudhary, Nitin, Kumar, Ankit et al. 2020. "SunPy: A Python package for Solar Physics." Journal of Open Source Software, 5 1832. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01832. 2020
- Reeves, Katharine K., Török, Tibor, Mikić, Zoran, Linker, Jon, and Murphy, Nicholas A. 2019. "Exploring Plasma Heating in the Current Sheet Region in a Three-dimensional Coronal Mass Ejection Simulation." The Astrophysical Journal, 887 103. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab4ce8. 2019
- Ni, Lei, Lukin, Vyacheslav S., Murphy, Nicholas A., and Lin, Jun. 2018. "Magnetic Reconnection in Strongly Magnetized Regions of the Low Solar Chromosphere." The Astrophysical Journal, 852 95. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa9edb. 2018
- Ni, Lei, Lukin, Vyacheslav S., Murphy, Nicholas A., and Lin, Jun. 2018. "Magnetic reconnection in the low solar chromosphere with a more realistic radiative cooling model." Physics of Plasmas, 25 042903. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5018351. 2018
- Astropy Collaboration, Price-Whelan, A. M., Sipőcz, B. M., Günther, H. M., Lim, P. L., Crawford, S. M., Conseil, S., Shupe, D. L., Craig, M. W., Dencheva, N., Ginsburg, A., VanderPlas, J. T., Bradley, L. D., Pérez-Suárez, D., de Val-Borro, M., Aldcroft, T. L., Cruz, K. L., Robitaille, T. P., Tollerud, E. J., Ardelean, C., Babej, T., Bach, Y. P., Bachetti, M., Bakanov, A. V., Bamford, S. P. et al. 2018. "The Astropy Project: Building an Open-science Project and Status of the v2.0 Core Package." The Astronomical Journal, 156 123. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/aabc4f. 2018
- Ni, Lei, Zhang, Qing-Min, Murphy, Nicholas A., and Lin, Jun. 2017. "Blob Formation and Ejection in Coronal Jets due to the Plasmoid and Kelvin-Helmholtz Instabilities." The Astrophysical Journal, 841 27. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa6ffe. 2017
- Shen, Chengcai, Raymond, John C., Mikic, Zoran, Linker, Jon A., Reeves, Katharine K., and Murphy, Nicholas A. 2017. "Time-dependent Ionization in a Steady Flow in an MHD Model of the Solar Corona and Wind." The Astrophysical Journal, 850 26. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa93f3. 2017
- Shen, C., Raymond, John C., Murphy, Nicholas A., and Lin, J. 2015. "A Lagrangian scheme for time-dependent ionization in simulations of astrophysical plasmas." Astronomy and Computing, 12 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ascom.2015.04.003. 2015
- Murphy, Nicholas A. and Lukin, Vyacheslav S. 2015. "Asymmetric Magnetic Reconnection in Weakly Ionized Chromospheric Plasmas." The Astrophysical Journal, 805 134. https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/805/2/134. 2015
- Lin, Jun, Murphy, Nicholas A., Shen, Chengcai, Raymond, John C., Reeves, Katharine K., Zhong, Jiayong, Wu, Ning, and Li, Yan. 2015. "Review on Current Sheets in CME Development: Theories and Observations." Space Science Reviews, 194 237–302. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-015-0209-0. 2015
- Murphy, Nicholas A., Parnell, Clare E., and Haynes, Andrew L. 2015. "The appearance, motion, and disappearance of three-dimensional magnetic null points." Physics of Plasmas, 22 102117. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4934929. 2015
- Tian, Hui, Li, Gang, Reeves, Katharine K., Raymond, John C., Guo, Fan, Liu, Wei, Chen, Bin, and Murphy, Nicholas A. 2014. "Imaging and Spectroscopic Observations of Magnetic Reconnection and Chromospheric Evaporation in a Solar Flare." The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 797 L14. https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/797/2/L14. 2014
- Tian, H., DeLuca, Edward E., Cranmer, S. R., De Pontieu, B., Peter, H., Martínez-Sykora, J., Golub, L., McKillop, S., Reeves, Katharine K., Miralles, Mari Paz, McCauley, P., Saar, S., Testa, P., Weber, Mark A., Murphy, Nicholas A., Lemen, J., Title, A., Boerner, P., Hurlburt, N., Tarbell, T. D., Wuelser, J. P., Kleint, L., Kankelborg, C., Jaeggli, S., Carlsson, M. et al. 2014. "Prevalence of small-scale jets from the networks of the solar transition region and chromosphere." Science, 346 1255711. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1255711. 2014
- Shen, Chengcai, Reeves, Katharine K., Raymond, John C., Murphy, Nicholas A., Ko, Yuan-Kuen, Lin, Jun, Mikic, Zoran, and Linker, Jon A. 2013. "Non-equilibrium Ionization Modeling of the Current Sheet in a Simulated Solar Eruption." The Astrophysical Journal, 773 110. https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/773/2/110. 2013
- Murphy, Nicholas A., Miralles, Mari Paz, Pope, C. L., Raymond, John C., Winter, H. D., Reeves, Katharine K., Seaton, D. B., van Ballegooijen, Adriaan A., and Lin, J. 2012. "Asymmetric Magnetic Reconnection in Solar Flare and Coronal Mass Ejection Current Sheets." The Astrophysical Journal, 751 56. https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/751/1/56. 2012
- Mei, Z., Shen, C., Wu, N., Lin, J., Murphy, Nicholas A., and Roussev, I. I. 2012. "Numerical experiments on magnetic reconnection in solar flare and coronal mass ejection current sheets." Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 425 2824–2839. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.21625.x. 2012
- Oka, M., Phan, T. -D, Eastwood, J. P., Angelopoulos, V., Murphy, Nicholas A., Øieroset, M., Miyashita, Y., Fujimoto, M., McFadden, J., and Larson, D. 2011. "Magnetic reconnection X-line retreat associated with dipolarization of the Earth's magnetosphere." Geophysical Research Letters, 38 20105. https://doi.org/10.1029/2011GL049350. 2011
- Shen, Chengcai, Lin, Jun, and Murphy, Nicholas A. 2011. "Numerical Experiments on Fine Structure within Reconnecting Current Sheets in Solar Flares." The Astrophysical Journal, 737, (1) 14. https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/737/1/14. 2011
- Murphy, Nicholas A., Raymond, John C., and Korreck, K. E. 2011. "Plasma Heating During a Coronal Mass Ejection Observed By the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory." The Astrophysical Journal, 735 17. https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/735/1/17. 2011
- Johnson, H., Raymond, John C., Murphy, Nicholas A., Giordano, S., Ko, Y. K., Ciaravella, A., and Suleiman, Raid. 2011. "Transition Region Emission from Solar Flares during the Impulsive Phase." The Astrophysical Journal, 735 70. https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/735/2/70. 2011
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Conference Paper
- Schmider, F. X., Appourchaux, T., Gaulme, P., Guillot, T., Sato, B., Murphy, Nicholas A., Daban, J. B., Gay, J., Soulat, L., Baudin, F., Boumier, P., Ollivier, M., Bordé. P., Jackiewicz, J., Ida, S., Showman, A. P., Jain, K., Tripathy, S. C., Hill, F., Leibacher, J. W., and Pevtsov, A. A. 2013. "The JOVIAL Project for Jovian Seismology." from Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series. 478, 119. 2013
Activities
Teaching Activities
- Plasma Astrophysics Co-instructor of graduate course in Harvard's Department of Astronomy 2014 - 2016
Organizer Of Event
Affiliation
Member Of
- PlasmaPy Project Coordinating Committee 2017 -
- Solar and Stellar X-Ray Group 2012 -
Contact
Location
- Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Academic Department
