Dr. Motohiko Tanaka studied in the faculty of science
of high-temperature space plasmas and was awarded in the
Ph.D. degree of the University of Tokyo in 1981. He was born
in Tokyo (Japan). He is interested in nature and arts, mainly
paintings and classical music of Bach and Mozart.
Immediately following his studies, he moved to USA to engage
in a post-doctral research at the University of Maryland.
He was a member of the Institute for Physical Science and
Technology, and the heads of space physics were Prof. C. S. Wu
and Prof. K. Papadoupolous.
After returning to Japan, he developed the "macro-particle"
implicit simulation code to study the mesoscale kinetic phenomena
of plasmas. By using it, he first proved the origins of magnetic
reconnection by the non-MHD explosive effect of inertia, where
both electrons and ions move with separate freedom into
and outside the reconnection X point, in Physics of Plasmas,
1995 and 1996.
Beginning in 1996 he had the occasion of a year's stay at MIT
(the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA). At this time
his research field shifted to strongly Coulomb-coupled systems.
Recently, he added the research of solid-state physics
of microwave-material interactions, and energetic beam
generation by laser irradiation through Coulomb explosion.
He found in his research that "ice" in frozen state below 273
K
is not heated by microwaves due to crystal state (microwave
oven, in Giga Hertz), which was publised in Chemical Physics
in 2007.
His research includes microwave-materials interactions, Coulomb
explosion of hydrogen pellets irradiated by a short-pulse laser,
ionic condensed matters (charged polymers, molecular and
biological systems) and nanosize matters (solid, liquid), using both
classical and quantum mechanical (ab initio) molecular dynamics
simulations. His recent works also include the peculiar "charge
inversion" (strong double layers on particles), DNA translocation
through a nanopore, and the ab initio molecular dynamics study
of nano-sized matters. To achieve efficient computational
research, he is making R&D and maintaining high-speed cluster
machines.
He was one of five research leaders and the secretary of the MEXT
project under Prime Area Research of microwave fundamentals and
applications in 2006-2011. He was awarded by the first Rustom Ray
Innovator Award of Global Congress on Microwave Energy and
Application in 2008 (https://physique.isc.chubu.ac.jp/).
He has finished a long work on nanotube accelerators of intense
laser irradiation at Comput. Physics Comm. Vol.241, pp.56-63, 2019
(Science Direct); https://physique.isc.chubu.ac.jp/Arxiv1711.04106.pdf.
He is focusing on microwave physics of methane hydrate, and
the first-principle molecular dynamics simulations
After forty years of physics research, he has decided to make
his simulation codes be open in https://github.com/Mtanaka77/.
You are welcome to visit the pages and experience simulations.
Their four titles include:
1. Relativistic and electromagnetic molecular dynamics simulation,
2. Largescale electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulation,
3. SIESTA-4.1 on vector and paralell clusters,
4. Water and hydrate molecular dynamics by TIP5P code.
