About Man Hua
Hey friends, I am a postdoc scholar in space physics, working with Prof. Jacob Bortnik in the Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences Department at UCLA. I got both my bachelor’s and Ph.D. degrees from Wuhan University in China. I was once a visiting student at Boston University for one and a half year. My studies mainly focus on the radiation belt electron dynamics and resonant wave-particle interactions in Earth’s magnetosphere, including both naturally occurring and human-made plasma waves. I use several different techniques in my research, including satellite data analysis, physics-based numerical modeling, and ensemble simulation.
Contact:
Email: manhua@ucla.edu
Publications:
Personal page: https://manhua7.wixsite.com/manhua
Research Focus
The discovery of the Earth’s radiation belt in 1958 was a major milestone in geophysics and astronomy, which marked the birth of magnetospheric physics. The energetic electrons in the radiation belt, also known as “killer” electrons, pose a huge hazard to Earth-orbiting satellites as well as to our unprecedented space-based connection-dependent society. It is important to understand the underlying physical processes that contribute to the extreme case of the radiation environment. Our study revealed for the first time the natural upper limit of electron acceleration by chorus waves, which provides a new explanation of the observed most intense radiation environment apart from the previous theory that has been accepted for almost 60 years [Hua et al., 2022, GRL, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL099618].
