16th – 18th December 2024: High Power Laser Science Community Meeting
Prof. Willingale presented a tutorial talk about Direct Laser Acceleration at the Central Laser Facility’s 2024 Christmas High Power Laser Science Community Meeting. The meeting was held in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK.
27th November 2024: SPC Seminar, Imperial College London
Prof. Willingale presented a seminar titled “Unraveling the Direct Laser Acceleration of electron beams” to the Space Plasma and Climate group at Imperial College London.
21st November 2024: Physics of Plasmas publication
Our collaborator USCD PhD student I-Lin Yeh’s paper titled “Efficient backward x-ray emission in a finite-length plasma irradiated by a laser pulse of picosecond duration” is published in Physics of Plasmas.
21st October 2024: Atomic and Laser Physics Seminar, University of Oxford
Prof. Willingale presented a seminar titled “Unraveling the Direct Laser Acceleration of electron beams” to the Atomic and Laser Physics group in the Physics department at the University of Oxford.
7th – 11th October 2024: 66th Annual meeting of the APS DPP
GSRA’s Brendan Stassel, Veronica Contreras and Nico Kalem presented their work at the APS DPP annual meeting in Atlanta, GA. Dr. Hongmei Tang, now a postdoc at LBNL, gave an invited talk on her PhD thesis work! See the abstracts here:
GO07.00001 : Experimental measurements of relativistically induced transparency at BELLA iP2
JI02.00004 : Laser and Plasma Parameter Optimization for Direct Laser Acceleration of Electron Beams
September 2024: NNSA funding received
Prof. Willingale is the PI for the project titled “Direct Laser Acceleration of electrons for bright, directional radiation sources” that has been renewed for funding by the DOE NNSA. This project is to perform experiments on the OMEGA EP facility and collaborators at UC San Diego lead by Prof. Alexey Arefiev will support the project with theory and simulation.
September 2024: Sabbatical at the University of Oxford
Prof. Willingale begins a sabbatical for the academic year. She is a visitor in the Physics department at the University of Oxford, UK.
22nd – 26th July 2024: Advanced Accelerator Concepts workshop
Prof. Willingale presents “Unraveling the Direct Laser Acceleration of electron beams” at the 2024 Advanced Accelerator Concepts (AAC) workshop held at Naperville, IL.
11th July 2024: Zap it! camp
The Zap it! camp is an Electrify camp for high-school students. Prof. Willingale presented a lecture on “Plasma Research with ZEUS”. Outreach coordinator Elizabeth Oxford put together plasma demos to help illustrate the concepts to the campers.
9th – 10th July 2024: Extreme Light Workshop
Prof. Willingale presented “The NSF ZEUS laser: A high field user facility” at the DOD sponsored Extreme Light Workshop held at the Ohio State University.
17th June 2024: HEDSS lecture
Prof. Willingale presented a lecture on “Plasma Diagnostics” for the University of Michigan High Energy Density Summer School (HEDSS) 2024. She also helped give the summer school students tours of the ZEUS laser facility!
June 2024: New NSF Funding
Prof. Willingale is the PI for a new National Science Foundation project titled “Measuring Magnetic Field Dynamics Generated by Laser-Driven Electron Beams in Plasma Channels“. The project will support a Graduate Student Research Assistant (GSRA) to perform experiments using the ZEUS laser facility.
14th May 2024: Seminar at PSFC MIT
Prof. Willingale was invited to give a PSFC seminar at MIT.
9th May 2024: Seminar at IST in Lisbon
Prof. Willingale visited her collaborator Marija Vranic and her team at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon Portugal! She gave a seminar titled “Direct Laser Acceleration:Studies of the influence of laser focusing and plasma profile”.
9th May 2024: New Journal of Physics publication
Dr. Hongmei Tang’s paper titled “The influence of laser focusing conditions on the direct laser acceleration of electrons” is published in New Journal of Physics.
16th-18th April 2024: OLUG meeting
Veronica Contreras attends the Omega Laser User Group (OLUG) meeting in person at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, NY. Prof. Willingale attends virtually (she is still teaching!).
22nd March 2024: Physical Review Letters publication
The manuscript “Direct Laser Acceleration in Underdense Plasmas with Multi-PW Lasers: A Path to High-Charge, GeV-Class Electron Bunches” is published in Physical Review Letters.
23rd February 2024: Physics of Plasmas publication
The manuscript “Electron energy gain due to a laser frequency modulation experienced by electron during betatron motion” is published in Physics of Plasmas.
21-22 February 2024: SSAP Symposium
Professor Willingale, Dr. Hongmei Tang, and PhD student Veronica Contreras attended the 2024 Stewardship Science Academic Programs (SSAP) Symposium in Arlington, VA. PhD student I-Lin Yeh from UC San Diego is one of our project’s collaborators and also attended. We made presentations representing our project titled “Direct Laser Acceleration of Electrons for Bright, Directional Radiation Sources”.
February 2024: Journal of Plasma Physics Editorial Board
Prof. Willingale has joined the editorial board of the Journal of Plasma Physics! She looks forward to reading your manuscript submissions.
30th January 2024: NIF and JLF User Group Meeting
Prof. Willingale attended the NIF and JLF User Group Meeting in Livermore CA. Louise is the Chair of the NIF User Group and was really happy with the fantastic agenda, presentation and discussions at the meeting.
18th January 2024: Physical Review Research publication
Dr Paul Campbell and Dr Brandon Russell’s manuscript “Formation of collisionless shocks driven by strongly magnetized relativistic electrons in the laboratory” is published in Physical Review Research. Congratulations Paul and Brandon!