About Our Group

Interdisciplinary Plasma Lab (IPL) is a plasma physics research group at Auburn University. The mission of IPL is to promote plasma STEM and its many applications to society by conducting cutting-edge research, providing educational resources, and participating in thoughtful public engagement efforts. We believe that academic excellence stems from cross-disciplinary work and from combining analytical, numerical, experimental, and data-driven research methods to explain observation and inspire discovery.

This is a gif showing a dusty plasma cloud, or a collection of charged micron-sized particles suspended in low temperature plasma gas. Beyond their abundance in space and technological applications on Earth, dusty plasmas help us unlock the fundamental physics of self-organization and stability in complex systems.