Physicist using powerful lasers and plasmas to accelerate particles and study extreme conditions | any opinions are my own | he/him
London, UK
Joined December 2012
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Using X ray absorption spectroscopy we can explore how matter behaves under extreme conditions, like those found inside gas giant planets. New paper by Dave Riley’s group @QUBelfast with @bkettle and Rory Baggott from my group @DoP_Imperial. mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/at…
We used the Vulcan laser @CLF_STFC to shock compress and heat matter to 5 times higher than solid density and over 50 000 degrees and observed how nearby plasma affects the electronic structure of the ions.
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These sort of experiments will be even better when we combine X rays from a laser wakefield accelerator and shock shocks from a long pulse laser on #vulcan2020
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Last year I realised I’d had dinner with one of the winners of the physics Nobel prize (Alain Aspect). This year I can go one further and say I’ve been cooked dinner by a Nobel prize winner (Anne L’Hullier)! Congratulations Anne🎉
Looking forward to welcoming all the new first year physicists to Imperial @DoP_Imperial this morning!
And the new PhD students to our Physics of the Natural Environment Community!
🌌 Exciting News! I'm now the Head of the new Physics of the Natural Environment Community @DoP_Imperial, exploring plasmas, atmospheres, and solar science. From fusion energy and plasma accelerators to climate and space weather, a thrilling scientific journey awaits! 🚀
Prof Stuart Mangles retweeted
Looking for an exciting new career opportunity?
Our flagship laser, Vulcan, is about to go through a major upgrade that will increase its power to 20 PW and its energy to 20 kJ!
We are currently hiring for a range of roles, with more yet to come👩🔧🧑🔬👩💻
➡️ tinyurl.com/Vulcan20-20jobs
ALT Computer rendition of how the Vulcan 20-20 building may look.
A fun day today investigating Faraday’s law with 32 A level students with @blackettlabfam Sorry, no picture as I was too busy!!
Today I’m @CLF_STFC for the Culham Plasma Physics Summer School. Explaining that plasmas are not just good for fusion!
Congratulations to Dr Eva Los on her successful PhD viva for work on Radiation Reaction in strong electromagnetic fields! (sorry Eva I can’t find you to @ you)
ALT A selfie of a man and woman holding drinks on a cobbled street with a car and a woman in the background
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New paper alert! Robbie Watt’s paper on how he’s modified Geant4 to enable us to study photon-photon collisions using laser-plasma gamma and x-ray sources (with some neat machine learning to speed up the calculations) doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevAccel…
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This was work Robbie did during his PhD here @DoP_Imperial. Robbie is now @SLAClab working on applications of machine learning in particle accelerators
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In my field we do like to take small numbers and divide them by really small numbers to get really big numbers. I’m on my way to visit the world’s first 10 PW laser (25 J per pulse but in 25 femtoseconds) @ELINPMagurele
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This is the huge laser hall, where the laser pulses are amplified in stages all the way up to 200 J. While being amplified the pulses are stretched in time to stop them being too intense, but they are compressed back down to 20 fs. There’s plenty of space for l future upgrades!
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