Multidimensional Regimes Research Articles

Performance as Intersectional Resistance: Power, Polyphony and Processes of Abolition

Australia’s brutal carceral-border regime is a colonial system of intertwining systems of oppression that combine the prison-industrial complex and the border-industrial complex. It is a violent and multidimensional regime that includes an expanding prison industry and onshore and offshore immigration detention centres; locations of cruelty, and violent sites for staging contemporary politics and coloniality. This article shares insights into the making of a radical intersectional dance theatre work titled Jurrungu Ngan-ga by Marrugeku, Australia’s leading Indigenous and intercultural dance theatre company. The production, created between 2019–2021, brings together collaborations through and across Indigenous Australian, Kurdish, Iranian, Palestinian, Filipino, Filipinx, and Anglo settler performance, activism and knowledge production. The artistic, political and intellectual dimensions of the show reinforce each other to interrogate Australia’s brutal carceral regime and the concept of the border itself. The article is presented in a polyphonic structure of expanded interviews with the cast and descriptions of the resulting live performance. It identifies radical ways that intersectional and trans-disciplinary performances can, as an ‘act of liberation’, be applied to make visible, embody, address, and help dismantle systems of oppression, control and subjugation.

Application of particle-in-cell simulation in free-electron lasers

Particle-in-cell simulation of free-electon lasers has contributed significantly to understanding its physics, especially in the non-linear and multidimensional regimes where analytic theory is rather difficult to formulate. The basic techniques of plasma simulation and the one- and two-dimensional codes used in the simulation of free-electron lasers are discussed in detail. Important results obtained from simulation are presented: It has been found that waves propagating obliquely with respect to the electron beam are always unstable with appreciable growth rates and, therefore, the efficiency of generation of the on-axis high-frequency electromagnetic wave can be severely degraded. Furthermore, electromagnetic waves with group velocities opposite to the direction of electron beam propagation can be absolutely unstable. Complete disruption of the electron beam and laser oscillation due to the onset of the absolute instability have been observed in simulations. Moreover, computer simulation also shows that the absolute instability can be avoided if the parameters of the free-electron laser satisfy certain constraints. The dynamics of nonlinear saturation and the potential efficiency of energy extraction are presented in detail.